Photo of the Week: Facility for Laboratory Reconnection Experiment (FLARE)

The Facility for Laboratory Reconnection Experiment (FLARE) studies magnetic reconnection – the topological rearrangement of magnetic field lines – which underlies many explosive plasma phenomena at all scales in the visible universe, from fusion plasmas to solar flares and astrophysical jets. FLARE, which emerged from a partnership between five universities and two national labs, is the first laboratory to access new reconnection regimes and will help expand our understanding of a process so fundamental to the universe around us.

Photo Credit: Michael Livingston, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory