In situ spacecraft observations of a structured electron diffusion region during magnetopause reconnection
Abstract
The Electron Diffusion Region (EDR) is the region where magnetic reconnection is initiated and electrons are energized. Because of experimental difficulties, the structure of the EDR is still poorly understood. A key question is whether the EDR has a homogeneous or patchy structure. Here we report Magnetospheric MultiScale (MMS) novel spacecraft observations providing evidence of inhomogeneous current densities and energy conversion over a few electron inertial lengths within an EDR at the terrestrial magnetopause, suggesting that the EDR can be rather structured. These inhomogenenities are revealed through multi-point measurements because the spacecraft separation is comparable to a few electron inertial lengths, allowing the entire MMS tetrahedron to be within the EDR most of the time. These observations are consistent with recent high-resolution and low-noise kinetic simulations.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1903.01876,
title = {In situ spacecraft observations of a structured electron diffusion region during magnetopause reconnection},
author = {Giulia Cozzani and Alessandro Retinò and Francesco Califano and Alexandra Alexandrova and Olivier Le Contel and Yuri Khotyaintsev and Andris Vaivads and Huishan Fu and Filomena Catapano and Hugo Breuillard and Narges Ahmadi and Per-Arne Lindqvist and Robert E. Ergun and Robert B. Torbert and Barbara L. Giles and Christopher T. Russell and Rumi Nakamura and Stephen Fuselier and Barry H. Mauk and Thomas Moore and James L. Burch},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1903.01876},
year = {2019}
}