Localized Oscillatory Dissipation in Magnetopause Reconnection
Abstract
Data from the NASA Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission are used to investigate asymmetric magnetic reconnection at the dayside boundary between the Earth's magnetosphere and the solar wind (the magnetopause). High-resolution measurements of plasmas, electric and magnetic fields, and waves are used to identify highly localized (~15 electron Debye lengths) standing wave structures with large electric-field amplitudes (up to 100 mV/m). These wave structures are associated with spatially oscillatory dissipation, which appears as alternatingly positive and negative values of J dot E (dissipation). For small guide magnetic fields the wave structures occur in the electron stagnation region at the magnetosphere edge of the EDR. For larger guide fields the structures also occur near the reconnection x-line. This difference is explained in terms of channels for the out-of-plane current (agyrotropic electrons at the stagnation point and guide-field-aligned electrons at the x-line).
Cite
@article{arxiv.1712.05697,
title = {Localized Oscillatory Dissipation in Magnetopause Reconnection},
author = {J. L. Burch and R. E. Ergun and P. A. Cassak and J. M. Webster and R. B. Torbert and B. L. Giles and J. C. Dorelli and A. C. Rager and K. -J. Hwang and T. D. Phan and K. J. Genestreti and R. C. Allen and L. -J. Chen and S. Wang and D. Gershman and O. Le Contel and C. T. Russell and R. J. Strangeway and F. D. Wilder and D. B. Graham and M. Hesse and J. F. Drake and M. Swisdak and L. M. Price and M. A. Shay and P. -A. Lindqvist and C. J. Pollock and R. E. Denton and D. L. Newman},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1712.05697},
year = {2017}
}