Physics
Scientific paper
May 2001
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001agusm..sm31a02m&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2001, abstract #SM31A-02
Physics
2411 Electric Fields (2712), 2700 Magnetospheric Physics, 2724 Magnetopause, Cusp, And Boundary Layers
Scientific paper
The three axis electric field system on the ISTP GGS POLAR spacecraft has been used to measure for the first time the elusive E∥ that should be involved in collisionless magnetic reconnection. Parallel field amplitudes as high as 8mV/m have been detected and verified using a rigorous set of consistency checks within the electromagnetic measurements. The reported detections were determined by the electric and magnetic field data alone without any reference to, or any guidance from the plasma parameters. Hundreds of separate measurements, from the 40Hz electric field data over the time span of 06:36-07:15UT, were found during the May 29, 1996 separator encounter. After their selection, the parallel field data were shown to be uniformly bounded by the Vasyliunas limit (discussed in the companion paper Scudder et al.), which is related to the local magnetic field strength with plasma parameter proportionality constants. Even when that local field strength decreases towards zero (as is observed in this crossing of the separator) the decreasing bound nicely limits the weaker E∥ detected. Inverting this argument we infer the angle between B and E in these locales. While the bulk of these angles are above 80o, the range increases as the local magnetic field strength decreases and the spacecraft approaches the separator, while staying within the Vasyliunas limit. As the magnetic field strength increases the detected parallel electric fields occur in regimes where E is increasingly perpendicular to B. A superposed epoch picture of the spatial location of the E∥ detections will be presented illustrating their proximity to and location with respect to the separator. Because of the rigorous selection criteria, the spatial localization of the detections are a subset of the complete distribution of parallel electric field along the trajectory of the spacecraft.
Maynard Nelson C.
Mozer Forrest S.
Russell Christopher T.
Scudder Jack D.
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