Magnetic Disconnection From the Sun: Observations of a Reconnection Exhaust in the Solar Wind at the Heliospheric Current Sheet

Details Magnetic Disconnection From the Sun: Observations of a Reconnection Exhaust in the Solar Wind at the Heliospheric Current Sheet Magnetic Disconnection From the Sun: Observations of a Reconnection Exhaust in the Solar Wind at the Heliospheric Current Sheet

May 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005agusmsm33a..01g&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2005, abstract #SM33A-01

Physics

2109 Discontinuities, 2134 Interplanetary Magnetic Fields, 2164 Solar Wind Plasma, 7835 Magnetic Reconnection

Scientific paper

We have recently obtained direct evidence for local, quasi-stationary, magnetic reconnection in the solar wind using plasma and magnetic field data obtained by the Advanced Composition Explorer, ACE. The prime evidence consists of intervals of accelerated or decelerated plasma flow observed within magnetic field reversal regions that we interpret as encounters with (generic) Petschek-type reconnection exhausts that are bounded by Alfven waves. Only 1 out of 42 reconnection exhausts observed by ACE was associated with a crossing of the heliospheric current sheet, HCS, separating open field lines of opposite magnetic polarity. During that singular event, which corresponded to an encounter with the anti-sunward-directed exhaust from a reconnection site that initially lay sunward of the spacecraft, the solar wind electron strahl vanished and the halo electrons interpenetrated from opposite sides of the HCS. These observations demonstrate that magnetic field lines within and immediately surrounding the exhaust were disconnected from the Sun, as expected. More broadly, these observations conclusively demonstrate that strahl dropouts observed in the vicinity of the HCS at least at times are signatures of magnetic disconnection from the Sun.

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