Experimental Study of Magnetic Reconnection During the Merging Process of Two Colliding Field Reversed Configurations

Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental process in plasmas that can release magnetic energy via changing field line topology, resulting in a variety of violent phenomena. The reconnection has been extensively studied in low temperature experiments. Field reversed configuration (FRC) is a compact toroid with closed field geometry and is being pursued as an alternative fusion concept. We propose to use collision-merging FRC to study the reconnection in high parameter regime. Preliminary results from KMAX-FRC shows the evolution of field reversed configure measured by internal probe, and burst of light emission during merging taken by fast camera.