Simulation Study of Magnetic Reconnection Using Wire Ablation Plasma

The results of simulations of 2D X-point magnetic reconnection using the PERSEUS [1,2] code are presented for 2-wire and 4-wire configurations. It is shown that ablated wires begin a rapid plasma expansion phase after the reversal of driving voltage, which is followed by magnetic reconnection characterized by inflow and super-Alfv\'{e}nic outflow. The quantitative details of the 2D simulation results are presented, including the density, temperature and magnetic field distributions and the results are compared to the experiments on the~COBRA 1 MA pulser. Comparison between the magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) and extended-MHD models are also shown~for same pulsed power loads. \\[4pt] [1] M. R. Martin, Ph.D. thesis, Cornell University, 2010 \newline [2] C. E. Seyler, et al., Physics of Plasmas 18, 012703, 2011