Bidirectional jet formation during driven magnetic reconnection in two-beam laser-plasma interactions

Measurements of the bidirectional plasma jets that form at the surface of a solid target during a laser-generated driven magnetic reconnection are presented. Resistivity enhancement of at least 25 x the classical Spitzer value is required when applying the Sweet-Parker model of reconnection to reconcile the experimentally observed reconnection time scale. Analytic calculations show that a fast reconnection model, which includes a priori the effects of microturbulent resistivity enhancement, better reproduces the experimental observations. (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics.