Small-scale dipolarization fronts in the Earth’s magnetotail

作     者：Jing Huang Meng Zhou HuiMin Li XiaoHua Deng Jiang Liu ShiYong Huang 

作者机构：Institute of Space Science and Technology Nanchang University Nanchang 330031 China School of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering Xidian University Xi’an 710071 China Department of Earth Planetary and Space Sciences and Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics University of California Los Angeles California USA School of Electronic and Information Wuhan University Wuhan 430072 China 

出 版 物：《Earth and Planetary Physics》 (地球与行星物理（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2019年第3卷第4期

页      面：358-364页

核心收录：

学科分类：07[理学] 

基　　金：supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under grant 41774154 and 41504123 the Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province under grant 20122BAB21 2002 the Nanchang University graduate innovation special fund project under grant CX2017106 the Key Industry Innovation Chain of Shaanxi under grant 2018JQ4032 

主　　题：dipolarization front small scale Earth's magnetotail 

摘      要：Previous studies suggest that dipolarization fronts (DFs) are 1 to 3RE (RE is the earth radius) wide in the dawn-dusk direction. Recent kinetic simulations have found that DFs may break up into small-scale structures after they are produced by reconnection. Motivated by this simulation, we revisited the scale size of DFs in the dawn-dusk direction by using Cluster observations during the years when the inter-distance among Cluster spacecraft was between 1000 and 2000 km. We selected the DFs that were detected by more than one spacecraft and estimated the radii of these DFs by a simple geometrical analysis, which is based on comparison of DF normals observed by different spacecraft. We found a few DFs that were only a few ion inertial lengths in the dawn-dusk direction. These results point out the importance of multi-scale coupling during the evolution of DFs.