Other
Scientific paper
Dec 2004
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2004agufmsm11a1164s&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2004, abstract #SM11A-1164
Other
7827 Kinetic And Mhd Theory, 7835 Magnetic Reconnection, 2744 Magnetotail
Scientific paper
Four-spacecraft Cluster mission provided for the first time an unambiguous spatial-temporal picture of thin current sheets in the tail of Earth's magnetosphere. Some new elements of this picture, such as bifurcated current sheets and their flapping motions, could not be explained by the former current sheet theory and simulations and strongly stimulated their further development. It becomes more and more clear, in particular, that the classical theory of the current sheet equilibrium proposed by Harris [1962], which was used for years in current sheet and reconnection studies, needs to be strongly generalized to fit the new observations. Here we present the new results on a generalized Harris theory, which explicitly takes into account the effects of plasma anisotropy and non-gyrotropy, as well as particle simulations based on the new family of current sheet equilibria. We explore in particular the structure of the ion pressure tensor and the distinctive features of the ion distribution function. We present a modification of the previous model of the bifurcated current sheet [Sitnov et al., 2003] with a very small plasma anisotropy outside the sheet. We show that in contrast to Harris-type models, the presence of a dawn-dusk magnetic field makes the new models asymmetric along the north-south direction. We also consider the features of anisotropic current sheet with the thickness less than the thermal ion gyroradius in the field outside the sheet, which are most relevant to 2003 tail Cluster observations. It is shown that the spatial equilibrium structure of such sheets is much less susceptible to the ion anisotropy as compared to the thicker sheets. On the other hand, different dynamics of ions and electrons in these super-thin anisotropic sheets result in their strong charging. Another interesting effect is a relatively quick further collapse of the super-thin sheets prior to their inflation and distortion in the form of kink-type flapping motions.
Drake James F.
Guzdar Parvez N.
Sitnov Mikhail I.
Swisdak Michael
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