Preliminary Measurements of Non-Maxwellian Electron Energy Distributions During Magnetic Reconnection in a Laboratory Plasma

Nonthermal particle acceleration is believed to account for a large portion of the energy dissipated during magnetic reconnection. However, this process is poorly understood, and laboratory observation of non-thermal acceleration remains limited. Here, we present a novel design for a multi-channel electron energy analyzer for studies of electron acceleration in magnetic reconnection. This analyzer uses selector grids biased at fixed voltages to obtain a time-resolved five-channel spectrum of electron energy, allowing microsecond-scale plasma evolution to be measured without creating strong polarization currents that plague single-channel sweeping probes. We implement this probe in the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment (MRX). The results from initial experiments to detect non-Maxwellian (non-thermal) electron energy distributions due to magnetic reconnection will be shown if available.