Multiple Spacecraft Study of the Effect of Turbulence on Reconnection Rates

Details Multiple Spacecraft Study of the Effect of Turbulence on Reconnection Rates Multiple Spacecraft Study of the Effect of Turbulence on Reconnection Rates

Dec 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufmsm51c1839w&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #SM51C-1839

Physics

[2723] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetic Reconnection, [2772] Magnetospheric Physics / Plasma Waves And Instabilities

Scientific paper

Magnetic turbulence and secondary island formation have reemerged as possible explanations for fast reconnection. Recent three-dimensional simulations reveal the formation of secondary islands that serve to shorten the current sheet and increase the accelerating electric field, while both simulations and observations witness electron holes whose collapse energizes electrons. However, few data studies have explicitly investigated the effect of turbulence and islands on the reconnection rate. We present a more comprehensive analysis of the effect of turbulence and islands on reconnection rates observed in space. Our approach takes advantage of multiple spacecraft to find the location of the spacecraft relative to the inflow and the outflow, to estimate the reconnection electric field, indicate the presence and size of islands, and to determine wave vectors indicating turbulence. A superposed epoch analysis provides independent estimates of spatial scales and a reconnection electric field. Comparison with results from the wavevector and wave mode analyses measures the effect of turbulence or islands on the reconnection rate. From several case studies of reconnection events, we obtain preliminary estimates of the spectral scaling law, associated wave modes , and the resulting effective reconnection electric field.

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