Magnetic Island Formation Between Large-Scale Flow Vortices at an Undulating Post- noon Magnetopause for Northward IMF

Details Magnetic Island Formation Between Large-Scale Flow Vortices at an Undulating Post- noon Magnetopause for Northward IMF Magnetic Island Formation Between Large-Scale Flow Vortices at an Undulating Post- noon Magnetopause for Northward IMF

Dec 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufmsm53b..08e&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #SM53B-08

Physics

2723 Magnetic Reconnection (7526, 7835), 2724 Magnetopause And Boundary Layers, 2752 Mhd Waves And Instabilities (2149, 6050, 7836)

Scientific paper

THEMIS multi-spacecraft observations are presented for a ~2 hour-long post-noon magnetopause event on 8 June 2007 that for the first time indicate that the trailing (sunward) edges of Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) waves are commonly related to small-scale <0.5 RE magnetic islands or flux transfer events (FTE) during the growth phase of these surface waves. The FTEs typically show a characteristic bipolar BN structure with enhanced total pressure at their center. Most of the small-scale FTEs are not related to any major plasma acceleration. TH-A observations of one small FTE at a transition from the low-latitude boundary layer (LLBL) into a magnetosheath plasma depletion layer were reconstructed using two separate techniques that together confirm the presence of a magnetic island within the LLBL adjacent to the magnetopause. The island was associated with a small plasma vortex and both features appeared between two large-scale (~1 RE long and 2000 km wide) plasma vortices. We propose that the island may have been generated from a time-varying reconnection process at the sunward edge of the growing KH waves where the local magnetopause current sheet could be compressed by the action of the large-scale plasma vortices as suggested by numerical simulations of the KH instability.

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