Developing a Pulsed-Power-Driven Guide-Field Magnetic Reconnection Platform on MAIZE

We present new analyses and models of our pulsed-power-driven guide-field magnetic reconnection platforms on MAIZE. For both platforms, we use a dual exploding wire array, where plasma ablated from the arrays advects magnetic fields (~2 T) and collides between the arrays where a reconnection layer forms. In our first design, we attempted to prescribe an externally applied magnetic field (0-2 T) using a Helmholtz coil, which we found did not add a guide field to the plasma flows, as the external field was frozen out. For our second design (without a Helmholtz coil), we tilt the two arrays in opposite directions, re-orienting their azimuthal magnetic fields into orthogonal anti-parallel and guide-field components, embedded in the flows. We diagnose the plasma with B-dots, and two simultaneous Mach-Zehnder laser interferometers along orthogonal lines of sight. We observe a layer which rotates by an angle that increases with the guide field strength. An analytical model of the layer shape shows the tilted hardware geometry cannot explain this, and 3D GORGON simulations show no rotation with MHD alone. We propose the observed layer rotation is due to an interaction between the Hall field and the guide field.