This is a talk I gave for the High Energy Density Science Association on Monday May 3rd, 2021. The abstract is:
Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental process in plasma physics, which breaks and reforms magnetic field lines, changing their topology and dissipating magnetic energy as heat and kinetic energy. We use pulsed-power based reconnection experiments to study the effects such as the plasmoid instability and strong radiative cooling on the reconnection process. Alongside experiments carried out on MAGPIE at Imperial College London, I will present proposed experiments on the new PUFFIN facility at MIT, and at the Z Machine at Sandia.