Progress in understanding magnetic reconnection in laboratory and space astrophysical plasmas

This paper reviews the progress in understanding the fundamental physics of magnetic reconnection, focusing on significant results in the past decade from dedicated laboratory experiments, numerical simulations, and space astrophysical observations. Particularly in the area of local reconnection physics, many important findings have been made with respect to two-fluid dynamics, the profile of the neutral sheet, the effects of guide field, and scaling laws with respect to collisionality. Notable findings have been made on global reconnection dynamics through detailed documentation of magnetic self-organization phenomena in fusion plasmas as well as in solar flares. After a brief review of the well-known early work, we will discuss representative recent experimental and theoretical work and attempt to interpret the essence of significant modern findings. Especially, the recent data on local reconnection physics from the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment device [M. Yamada et al., Phys. Plasmas 13, 052119 (2006)] are used to compare experimental and numerical results. (C) 2007 American Institute of Physics.