Three-Spacecraft Detections of a Magnetic Reconnection X-Line Extending More Than 390 Earth Radii in the Solar Wind

Details Three-Spacecraft Detections of a Magnetic Reconnection X-Line Extending More Than 390 Earth Radii in the Solar Wind Three-Spacecraft Detections of a Magnetic Reconnection X-Line Extending More Than 390 Earth Radii in the Solar Wind

Dec 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005agufmsm13c..05p&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2005, abstract #SM13C-05

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

2723 Magnetic Reconnection (7526, 7835), 7845 Particle Acceleration, 7846 Plasma Energization

Scientific paper

Magnetic reconnection in a current sheet is a magnetic to particle energy conversion process that is important in many space and astrophysical contexts. It is not presently known whether reconnection is fundamentally a process that can occur over an extended region in space or whether it is patchy and unpredictable in nature. Here we report Wind, ACE, and Cluster observations of accelerated flow associated with reconnection in a current sheet embedded in the solar wind flow where the reconnection X-line extended at least 390 RE (or 2.5 million km). Observations of this and 27 similar events imply that reconnection is fundamentally large scale. Patchy and transient reconnection often reported in the magnetosphere is likely to be a geophysical effect associated with boundary conditions rather than a fundamental property of reconnection. Our observations also reveal, somewhat surprisingly, that reconnection can operate in a quasi-steady-state manner even when undriven by the external flow.

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