Multispacecraft observation of electron pitch angle distributions in magnetotail reconnection

Details Multispacecraft observation of electron pitch angle distributions in magnetotail reconnection Multispacecraft observation of electron pitch angle distributions in magnetotail reconnection

Jan 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010jgra..11501209w&link_type=abstract

Journal of Geophysical Research, Volume 115, Issue A1, CiteID A01209

Physics

Plasma Physics

11

Space Plasma Physics: Magnetic Reconnection (2723, 7526), Space Plasma Physics: Charged Particle Motion And Acceleration, Magnetospheric Physics: Magnetotail, Magnetospheric Physics: Plasma Sheet, Magnetospheric Physics: Magnetospheric Configuration And Dynamics

Scientific paper

In this paper, we present Cluster observations of a magnetotail reconnection event without the presence of an obvious guide magnetic field and analyze electron pitch angle distributions in the vicinity of the X line and the outflow region, respectively. In the vicinity of the X line, at lower energies the distributions are highly anisotropic (field-aligned bidirectional anisotropic), while at higher energies, the electrons are observed to flow away from the X line along the magnetic field lines. The electron distributions change largely in the outflow region. At the edge of the outflow region, at lower energies, the electrons flow toward the X line, while the electrons at higher energies are directed away from the X line. When the satellites approach the center of the current sheet, at lower energies, the electrons have field-aligned bidirectional distributions, while at higher energies, the electron distributions are isotropic. The generation mechanisms of such distributions are explained by following typical electron trajectories in the electric and magnetic fields of magnetic reconnection, which are obtained in two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. It is shown that the observed high-energy electrons directed away from the X line both in the vicinity of the X line and in the outflow region are due to the acceleration by the reconnection electric field near the X line, and the field-aligned bidirectional distributions at lower energies are caused by the effects of the magnetic mirror in the reconnection site. The isotropic distributions at higher energies in the outflow region are the results of the electron stochastic motions when their gyroradii are comparable to the curvature radii of the magnetic field lines.

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