Search Publications
Non-diffusive resonant acceleration of electrons in the radiation belts
Artemyev, A. V.; Agapitov, O. V.; Krasnoselskikh, V. V. +2 more
We describe a mechanism of resonant electron acceleration by oblique high-amplitude whistler waves under conditions typical for the Earth radiation belts. We use statistics of spacecraft observations of whistlers in the Earth radiation belts to obtain the dependence of the angle θ between the wave-normal and the background magnetic field on magnet…
Electric field structure inside the secondary island in the reconnection diffusion region
Deng, X. H.; Huang, S. Y.; Zhou, M.
Secondary islands have recently been intensively studied because of their essential role in dissipating energy during reconnection. Secondary islands generally form by tearing instability in a stretched current sheet, with or without guide field. In this article, we study the electric field structure inside a secondary island in the diffusion regi…
Plasma penetration of the dayside magnetopause
Lundin, R.; Gunell, H.; Dandouras, I. +6 more
Data from the Cluster spacecraft during their magnetopause crossing on 25 January 2002 are presented. The magnetopause was in a state of slow non-oscillatory motion during the observational period. Coherent structures of magnetosheath plasma, here typified as plasmoids, were seen on closed magnetic field lines on the inside of the magnetopause. Us…
Phase space structure of the electron diffusion region in reconnection with weak guide fields
Egedal, J.; Daughton, W.; Ng, J. +1 more
Kinetic simulations of magnetic reconnection provide detailed information about the electric and magnetic structure throughout the simulation domain, as well as high resolution profiles of the essential fluid parameters including the electron and ion densities, flows, and pressure tensors. However, the electron distribution function, f(v), within …
In-plane electric fields in magnetic islands during collisionless magnetic reconnection
Chen, Li-Jen; Roytershteyn, Vadim; Daughton, William +3 more
Magnetic islands are a common feature in both the onset and nonlinear evolution of magnetic reconnection. In collisionless regimes, the onset typically occurs within ion-scale current layers leading to the formation of magnetic islands when multiple X lines are involved. The nonlinear evolution of reconnection often gives rise to extended electron…
Revealing the sub-structures of the magnetic reconnection separatrix via particle-in-cell simulation
Deng, X. H.; Huang, S. Y.; Yuan, Z. G. +7 more
Magnetic separatrix is an important boundary layer separating the inflow and outflow regions in magnetic reconnection. In this article, we investigate the sub-structures of the separatrix region by using two-and-half dimensional electromagnetic particle-in-cell simulation. The separatrix region can be divided into two sub-regions in terms of the i…
Magnetised Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in the intermediate regime between subsonic and supersonic regimes
Henri, P.; Califano, F.; Pegoraro, F. +1 more
The understanding of the dynamics at play at the Earth's Magnetopause, the boundary separating the Earth's magnetosphere and the solar wind plasmas, is of primary importance for space plasma modeling. We focus our attention on the low latitude flank of the magnetosphere where the velocity shear between the magnetosheath and the magnetospheric plas…
Coupling between whistler waves and slow-mode solitary waves
Le Contel, O.; Tenerani, A.; Califano, F. +1 more
The interplay between electron- and ion-scale phenomena is of general interest for both laboratory and space plasma physics. In this paper, we investigate the linear coupling between whistler waves and slow magnetosonic solitons through two-fluid numerical simulations. Whistler waves can be trapped in the presence of inhomogeneous external fields …
Ring-shaped velocity distribution functions in energy-dispersed structures formed at the boundaries of a proton stream injected into a transverse magnetic field: Test-kinetic results
Voitcu, Gabriel; Echim, Marius M.
In this paper, we discuss the formation of ring-shaped and gyro-phase restricted velocity distribution functions (VDFs) at the edges of a cloud of protons injected into non-uniform distributions of the electromagnetic field. The velocity distribution function is reconstructed using the forward test-kinetic method. We consider two profiles of the e…
Current sheet oscillations in the magnetic filament approach
Semenov, V. S.; Erkaev, N. V.; Biernat, H. K.
Magnetic filament approach is applied for modeling of nonlinear "kink"-like flapping oscillations of thin magnetic flux tubes in the Earth's magnetotail current sheet. A discrete approximation for the magnetic flux tube was derived on a basis of the Hamiltonian formulation of the problem. The obtained system of ordinary differential equations was …