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Multispacecraft observations of the electron current sheet, neighboring magnetic islands, and electron acceleration during magnetotail reconnectiona)

Fazakerley, Andrew; Khotyaintsev, Yuri; Lefebvre, Bertrand +9 more

Open questions concerning structures and dynamics of diffusion regions and electron acceleration in collisionless magnetic reconnection are addressed based on data from the four-spacecraft mission Cluster and particle-in-cell simulations. Using time series of electron distribution functions measured by the four spacecraft, distinct electron region…

Applications of the wave kinetic approach: From laser wakefields to drift wave turbulencea)

Davies, J. A.; Vaivads, A.; Dunlop, M. W. +8 more

Nonlinear wave-driven processes in plasmas are normally described by either a monochromatic pump wave that couples to other monochromatic waves or as a random phase wave coupling to other random phase waves. An alternative approach involves a random or broadband pump coupling to monochromatic and/or coherent structures in the plasma. This approach…

Numerical experiments on plasmoids entering a transverse magnetic field

Gunell, H.; Nilsson, H.; Brenning, N. +3 more

Plasma from the Earth's magnetosheath has previously been observed inside the magnetosphere. Inhomogeneities in the magnetosheath plasma, here called plasmoids, can impact the magnetopause and doing so set up a polarizing field that allows it to penetrate the magnetopause and enter the magnetosphere. A set of simulations of plasmoids with differen…

Nonlinear gyrokinetic theory for steady-state mirror mode magnetic structures

Jovanović, D.; Shukla, P. K.

The analytic study of the saturated state of the mirror instability is presented. The perpendicular ion momentum is described by the hydrodynamic equations, with the finite Larmor radius corrections found from the collisionless stress tensor, while the ion density, the parallel flow, and the pressure are calculated using the gyrokinetic descriptio…

Kinetic Alfvén waves turbulence in the Earth's magnetosphere

Sharma, R. P.; Kumar, Sachin

The numerical simulations of the model equation governing the nonlinear dynamics of kinetic Alfvén waves in the intermediate-β plasmas are performed. When the nonlinearity arises due to the ponderomotive force driven density perturbations of kinetic Alfvén waves, the model equation turns out to be a modified nonlinear Schrödinger equation. This ha…

Kinetic theory for the ion humps at the foot of the Earth's bow shock

Krasnoselskikh, V. V.; Jovanović, D.

The nonlinear kinetic theory is presented for the ion acoustic perturbations at the foot of the Earth's quasiperpendicular bow shock, that is characterized by weakly magnetized electrons and unmagnetized ions. The streaming ions, due to the reflection of the solar wind ions from the shock, provide the free energy source for the linear instability …