Introducing a New DoE Collaborative Research Facility: FLARE

The FLARE (Facility for LAboratory Reconnection Experiments; www.pppl.gov/FLARE) device is a new experimental platform for the study of magnetic reconnection in the multiple X-line regimes in the reconnection phase diagram [1,2], directly relevant to space, solar, astrophysical, and fusion plasmas. FLARE will allow us to perform controlled reconnection experiments at parameters never available before in the laboratory. Funded by NSF (under the grant PHY-1337831), the device was originally constructed and tested on the main campus of Princeton University. Funded by DoE (under the contract #DE-AC02-09CH11466) and Princeton University, the FLARE device has been relocated to and installed at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) with a full set of initial diagnostics and an upgraded set of power supplies and infrastructure required to provide access to new regimes of magnetic reconnection. The first plasmas were successfully generated on April 14, 2025 and initial operations began on June 1, 2025 at PPPL. The capabilities of the facility and its initial plan will be presented in preparation for its establishment as a DoE collaborative research facility. Numerical predictions using the state-of-the-art particle-in-cell code, VPIC, will be discussed to guide the first physics operation of FLARE and to interpret the obtained experimental results. [1] H. Ji and W. Daughton, PoP 18, 111207 (2011). [2] H. Ji, W. Daughton, J. Jara-Almonte, A. Le, A. Stanier, J. Yoo, Nat Rev Phys 4, 263 (2022).