Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufmsm41a1857t&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #SM41A-1857
Physics
[2723] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetic Reconnection, [2744] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetotail, [2753] Magnetospheric Physics / Numerical Modeling, [2790] Magnetospheric Physics / Substorms
Scientific paper
Dipolarization in the magnetotail during substorms and bursty bulk flows has a form of transient dipolarization fronts marked by a sharp increase of the north magnetic field component followed by a shallower decrease. A similar trend is observed for the electric field and an opposite one for the plasma density. While the initial phase of fronts, including their north-south magnetic field asymmetry, can be explained using the existing theory and modeling of the reconnection onset, their decay and other details of their shaping by the reconnection burst remain poorly investigated. We explore two possible mechanisms responsible for the transient nature of the magnetotail dipolarization, including their relatively quick cessation, the negative charging of the thin current sheet, and the spontaneous reconnection in a self-consistent tail current sheet equilibrium. The first scenario is modeled using the GEM Reconnection Challenge simulation setup (Birn et al., 2001) in full-particle simulations of the Harris current sheet with the enhanced drift velocity of the electron species and a background plasma population, which is used to shield the electrostatic field outside the sheet. The second scenario is investigated by considering spontaneous and weakly driven reconnection regimes in a 2D magnetotail equilibrium, which was recently proposed by Sitnov and Schindler (2010) as a model having the tearing stability threshold lower than that in the previously investigated self-consistent models. The consistency of the considered onset regimes with the ionospheric signatures of dipolarizations is discussed.
Sitnov Mikhail I.
Swisdak Michael
Thompson William B.
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