Cluster Spacecraft Observations of Magnetic Reconnection Separatrix Regions at the Earth's Dayside Magnetopause.

Details Cluster Spacecraft Observations of Magnetic Reconnection Separatrix Regions at the Earth's Dayside Magnetopause. Cluster Spacecraft Observations of Magnetic Reconnection Separatrix Regions at the Earth's Dayside Magnetopause.

Dec 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005agufmsm23a0403r&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2005, abstract #SM23A-0403

Physics

2723 Magnetic Reconnection (7526, 7835), 2724 Magnetopause And Boundary Layers, 2772 Plasma Waves And Instabilities (2471), 2784 Solar Wind/Magnetosphere Interactions

Scientific paper

Magnetic reconnection is a process that changes the topology of the magnetic field and converts magnetic energy into particles energy. It is considered to be the dominant process that ultimately allows the transfer of mass, momentum and energy from the solar wind into the Earth's magnetosphere. Magnetic reconnection is initiated in a microscopic region, the so-called diffusion region, where plasma and magnetic field are decoupled. The study of the magnetic separatrices, i.e. the magnetic field lines connected to the X-line, can provide information about the microphysics of the diffusion region. We present Cluster spacecraft observations of reconnection close to the X-line and we show that a separatrix region several ion inertial lengths λi wide can be identified between the magnetic separatrix and the reconnection jet on the magnetospheric side of the magnetopause. The separatrix region contains a few subregions about one λi wide that are highly structured in the electric field with scales down to the Debye length λd, even though the X-line can be up to several tenths of λi away. A comparison with recent numerical simulations shows a good agreement with our observations although some observed features are not resolved by the simulations.

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