Direct Evidence for Magnetic Reconnection in the Solar Wind Near 1 AU

Details Direct Evidence for Magnetic Reconnection in the Solar Wind Near 1 AU Direct Evidence for Magnetic Reconnection in the Solar Wind Near 1 AU

Dec 2004

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2004agufmsh33b..06g&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2004, abstract #SH33B-06

Other

7835 Magnetic Reconnection, 2109 Discontinuities, 2111 Ejecta, Driver Gases, And Magnetic Clouds, 2134 Interplanetary Magnetic Fields, 2164 Solar Wind Plasma

Scientific paper

We have obtained direct evidence for local magnetic reconnection in the solar wind using solar wind plasma and magnetic field data obtained by the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE). The prime evidence consists of accelerated ion flow observed within a magnetic field reversal region in the interior or at the rear edge of an interplanetary coronal mass ejection (ICME) on November 23, 1997. The observed plasma acceleration was consistent with the Walen relationship, which relates changes in flow velocity to density-weighted changes in the magnetic field vector. Pairs of proton beams having comparable densities and counterstreaming relative to one another along the magnetic field at a speed of ~2 Va, where Va was the local Alfven speed, were observed within portions of the accelerated flow event. We infer from the observations that reconnection occurred sunward of the spacecraft and that the accelerated flow occurred within a reconnection exhaust region bounded by Alfven waves and having a width of ~400,000 km. The counterstreaming ion beams resulted from solar wind plasma entering the exhaust region from opposite directions along the magnetic field. A similar reconnection-associated event was observed within an ICME on October 3, 2000; however, we have not yet identified additional events of this nature, possibly because predicted accelerations are relatively small for typical solar wind densities and magnetic field strengths.

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