Search Publications
Evidence for lunar tide effects in Earth's plasmasphere
Zong, Qiugang; Guo, Ruilong; Xiao, Chao +18 more
Tides are universal and affect spatially distributed systems, ranging from planetary to galactic scales. In the Earth-Moon system, effects caused by lunar tides were reported in the Earth's crust, oceans, neutral gas-dominated atmosphere (including the ionosphere) and near-ground geomagnetic field. However, whether a lunar tide effect exists in th…
Coalescence of magnetic flux ropes in the ion diffusion region of magnetic reconnection
Wang, Shui; Huang, Can; Guo, Fan +7 more
Merging magnetic flux ropes, which are believed to play an important role in magnetic reconnection, have now been clearly identified. Observations show that coalescence is indeed closely related to reconnection dynamics and also to turbulence.
Cross-scale energy transport in space plasmas
Nykyri, K.; Moore, T. W.; Dimmock, A. P.
The solar wind is a supersonic magnetized plasma streaming far into the heliosphere. Although cooling as it flows, it is rapidly heated upon encountering planetary obstacles. At Earth, this interaction forms the magnetosphere and its sub-regions. The present paper focuses on particle heating across the boundary separating the shocked solar wind an…
A journey through scales
Retinò, Alessandro
Direct satellite observations of energy transfer between large and small space plasma scales contribute to our understanding of how matter in the Universe gets hot.
Energetic electron acceleration by unsteady magnetic reconnection
André, M.; Vaivads, A.; Khotyaintsev, Yu. V. +2 more
Magnetic reconnection in the Earth's magnetosphere accelerates electrons. And yet energetic electrons are not created during reconnection in the solar wind. Observations from the Cluster spacecraft now suggest that electron acceleration is caused by repeated bursts of plasma flow, which only occur in situations where the magnetic reconnection is u…
Large-scale electron acceleration by parallel electric fields during magnetic reconnection
Egedal, J.; Daughton, W.; Le, A.
Magnetic reconnection is a process by which the field lines of a magnetized plasma undergo dramatic realignment, releasing large amounts of energy. Large-scale simulations of reconnection events in the Earth's magnetosphere suggest that this process takes place over much greater distances than previously expected.
Observations and simulations of non-local acceleration of electrons in magnetotail magnetic reconnection events
Hwang, Kyoung-Joo; Kivelson, Margaret G.; Schriver, David +6 more
Magnetic reconnection in magnetized plasmas represents a change in magnetic field topology and is associated with a concomitant energization of charged particles that results from a conversion of magnetic energy into particle energy. In Earth's magnetosphere this process is associated with the entry of the solar wind into the magnetosphere and wit…
Observation of energetic electrons within magnetic islands
Daly, P. W.; Khotyaintsev, Y.; Vaivads, A. +10 more
Magnetic reconnection is the underlying process that releases impulsively an enormous amount of magnetic energy in solar flares , flares on strongly magnetized neutron stars and substorms in the Earth's magnetosphere. Studies of energy release during solar flares, in particular, indicate that up to 50% of the released energy is carried by accelera…
In situ evidence of magnetic reconnection in turbulent plasma
André, M.; Vaivads, A.; Owen, C. J. +3 more
Magnetic reconnection is a universal process leading to energy conversion in plasmas. It occurs in the Solar System, in laboratory plasmas and is important in astrophysics . Reconnection has been observed so far only at large-scale boundaries between different plasma environments . It is not known whether reconnection occurs and is important in tu…
Satellite observations of separator-line geometry of three-dimensional magnetic reconnection
Escoubet, C. P.; Dandouras, I.; Glassmeier, K. -H. +14 more
Detection of a separator line that connects magnetic nulls and the determination of the dynamics and plasma environment of such a structure can improve our understanding of the three-dimensional (3D) magnetic reconnection process. However, this type of field and particle configuration has not been directly observed in space plasmas. Here we report…