It has been widely accepted that a major mechanism for generating the high-speed plasma flows (HSPFs) observed in the magnetotail is the magnetic reconnection. Furthermore, these magnetotail HSPFs are observed at bo...
It has been widely accepted that a major mechanism for generating the high-speed plasma flows (HSPFs) observed in the magnetotail is the magnetic reconnection. Furthermore, these magnetotail HSPFs are observed at both geomagnetically quiet and active times. However, it has been open question and controversial whether the magnetic reconnection is main mechanism to produce even magnetotail HSPFs observed at geomagnetically quiet times, and how the relationship between the HSPFs and the auroral activation is. In this study, we focused on the 4 magnetotail HSPF events observed by THEMIS. The main characteristics of these HSPF events are shown as follows;1) the value of the GSM-X component for the plasma velocity (|Vx|) was higher than 300 km/s 2) the velocity perpendicular to the local magnetic field (|V⊥|) ranged between about 200 km/s and 500 km/s 3) these high-speed plasma flows are observed during which the AL and AU indices were lower than 40 nT and the range of the Kp index was between -1 and 1. Simultaneous all magnetic field components were varying and magnetic field intensity showed the enhancement in almost all events. These results are clearly suggesting that the HSPFs induced some magnetic perturbations, and the magnetic flux was transported and piled up by the HSPFs in the magnetotail even at geomagnetically quiet times. Interestingly, some HSPF events were associated with the Pi 2 waves, but the others were not. Therefore, the magnetic reconnection might not always play a crucial role for producing the HSPFs at geomagnetically quiet times. Furthermore, the striking auroral activation was not observed in all events, indicating that the HSPFs at geomagnetically quiet times can occur in association with not only "substorm" but also "substorm-like phenomena", such as pseudo-substorm.
Magnetic reconnection (MR) has been commonly studied in two dimensional geometry and usually classified into two categories: anti-parallel and component, the terminology widely used in magnetospheric physics. Howeve...
Magnetic reconnection (MR) has been commonly studied in two dimensional geometry and usually classified into two categories: anti-parallel and component, the terminology widely used in magnetospheric physics. However, MR is three dimensional (3D) in nature. It is thus necessary to reveal the 3D configuration of anti-parallel and component reconnection in reality. In this presentation we study an event in the magnetotail by reconstructing the magnetic field structure in the MR region based on Cluster four spacecraft measurements. The details of the reconstruction approach can be found in He et al. (2008). It is found that in the event both anti-parallel and component reconnection processes can be detected. The reconstruction shows that in both processes two fan surfaces can be identified and intersect to form a separator. The MR process takes place just on the separator line. In the plane locally perpendicular to the separator, the magnetic field lines display the X-type topology. In the component MR process observed, a null-pair appears at the two ends of the separator. The magnetic field magnitude is found significant in the middle of the separator. On the other hand in the anti-parallel MR process observed, the magnetic field magnitude of the separator is however very weak everywhere. In short, this study shows that the 3D separator MR model can be applied for both processes, i.e., both component and anti-parallel MR processes require a null pair. Component and anti-parallel configurations are just the local manifestations of the 3D separator MR process.
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