Dynamics of Thin Current Sheets in the Magnetotail and the Magnetopause: Structure and Stability

Details Dynamics of Thin Current Sheets in the Magnetotail and the Magnetopause: Structure and Stability Dynamics of Thin Current Sheets in the Magnetotail and the Magnetopause: Structure and Stability

May 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agusmsm22a..04b&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2007, abstract #SM22A-04

Physics

7835 Magnetic Reconnection (2723, 7526)

Scientific paper

Thin current sheets are internal boundary layers that mediate reconnection in the Earth's magnetotail and at the magnetopause. Such thin current sheets tend to form either as a result of an internal instability or due to the influence of external boundary perturbations. They are typically embedded within a broader reconnection layer on the ion inertial scale, and often exhibit bursty or impulsive behavior. Recent observations on Cluster, aided by new analytical models and Hall MHD simulations, have enabled much more precise characterization of the structure and stability of thin current sheets. New simulation results enable us to delineate when thin current sheets exhibit near-explosive growth and when the instability is quenched nonlinearly due to the spontaneous excitation of strong diamagnetic flows. Under certain circumstances, thin current sheets formed in the magnetotail during the growth phase of a substorm undergo secondary ballooning instabilities at near- Earth distances, producing shock-like coherent structures and strong sheared flows. These theoretical predictions are compared with data from Cluster and Polar.

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