Current Structure and Motion of a Northward IMF X-Line

Details Current Structure and Motion of a Northward IMF X-Line Current Structure and Motion of a Northward IMF X-Line

May 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005agusmsm23b..13w&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2005, abstract #SM23B-13

Physics

2724 Magnetopause, Cusp, And Boundary Layers, 2728 Magnetosheath, 2730 Magnetosphere: Inner, 2744 Magnetotail, 7835 Magnetic Reconnection

Scientific paper

On March 18, 2002, between 14:50 and 15:03 UT, Cluster passed from the tail lobe northward and sunward into the magnetosheath. The IMAGE FUV instrument observed a proton emission, northward of the auroral zone, that endured for a period of hours, including the time of the Cluster crossing. Some researchers mapped the location of cluster during its magnetopause crossing to the location of the ionospheric footprint observed by IMAGE. We argue from Cluster PEACE electron and magnetic field data that the Cluster spacecraft pass to within at least 5 km of an active x-line, the spacecraft actually entering the Hall zone where ions demagnetize. We map the position of the x-line at the points of closest approach to each spacecraft through inversion of a low-order expansion for the magnetic field near the x-line, allowing us to infer the current structure, velocity, orientation, and size of the x-line. The functional fit to the data also gives an estimate of the thickness of the current sheet. The x-line earth and IMF fields form a large angle from the GSE x-direction and while undergoing enhancement in the GSE y-direction, consistent with anti-parallel reconnection, but with a twist in the x-y plane. We propose that the x-line, though it does waver across the spacecraft several times, is largely stable over the times of Cluster observations.

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