Toward Measurement of Electron Pressure Anisotropy during Guide Field Laboratory Reconnection

The Terrestrial Reconnection EXperiment (TREX) at the Wisconsin Plasma Physics Laboratory (WiPPL) studies collisionless magnetic reconnection using a cylindrically symmetric architecture. We have developed a pressure anisotropy probe that can measure plasma flows and temperature anisotropies during reconnection. With the installation of a drive cylinder, allowing us to drive our system much more strongly, magnetic reconnection in our machine is in the collisionless kinetic regime in which we expect electron anisotropy effects to dominate the physics of the ion diffusion regime. Embedded jets, seen in laboratory data, are driven into the outflow as expected from spacecraft observation of the magnetosphere, theory, and simulations. We've also observed pressure anisotropy in the laboratory with the pressure anisotropy probe. The poster will present our preliminary observations of electron pressure anisotropy as measured by the pressure anisotropy probe.