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Magnetotail dipolarization fronts and particle acceleration: A review

Liu, Chengming; Grigorenko, Elena E.; Fu, Huishan +6 more

Particle Dynamics in the Earth's Radiation Belts: Review of Current Research and Open Questions

Li, X.; Ukhorskiy, A. Y.; Fennell, J. F. +4 more

The past decade transformed our observational understanding of energetic particle processes in near-Earth space. An unprecedented suite of observational systems was in operation including the Van Allen Probes, Arase, Magnetospheric Multiscale, Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms, Cluster, GPS, GOES, and Los Alamos N…

Atmospheric Escape Processes and Planetary Atmospheric Evolution

Simon Wedlund, C.; Maggiolo, R.; Cessateur, G. +17 more

The habitability of the surface of any planet is determined by a complex evolution of its interior, surface, and atmosphere. The electromagnetic and particle radiation of stars drive thermal, chemical, and physical alteration of planetary atmospheres, including escape. Many known extrasolar planets experience vastly different stellar environments …

Magnetohydrodynamic and kinetic scale turbulence in the near-Earth space plasmas: a (short) biased review

Sahraoui, Fouad; Huang, Shiyong; Hadid, Lina

The near-Earth space is a unique laboratory to explore turbulence and energy dissipation processes in magnetized plasmas thanks to the availability of high-quality data from various orbiting spacecraft, such as Wind, Stereo, Cluster, Themis, and the more recent one, the NASA Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission. In comparison with the solar win…

Magnetic Reconnection in the Space Sciences: Past, Present, and Future

Hesse, M.; Cassak, P. A.

Magnetic reconnection converts, often explosively, stored magnetic energy to particle energy in space and in the laboratory. Through processes operating on length scales that are tiny, it facilitates energy conversion over dimensions of, in some cases, hundreds of Earth radii. In addition, it is the mechanism behind large current disruptions in fu…

Diffuse and Pulsating Aurora

Miyoshi, Yoshizumi; Nishimura, Yukitoshi; Katoh, Yuto +14 more

This chapter reviews fundamental properties and recent advances of diffuse and pulsating aurora. Diffuse and pulsating aurora often occurs on closed field lines and involves energetic electron precipitation by wave-particle interaction. After summarizing the definition, large-scale morphology, types of pulsation, and driving processes, we review o…

Aurora in the Polar Cap: A Review

Frey, Harald U.; Kullen, Anita; Maggiolo, Romain +5 more

This paper reviews our current understanding of auroral features that appear poleward of the main auroral oval within the polar cap, especially those that are known as Sun-aligned arcs, transpolar arcs, or theta auroras. They tend to appear predominantly during periods of quiet geomagnetic activity or northwards directed interplanetary magnetic fi…

Quiet, Discrete Auroral Arcs—Observations

Marghitu, O.; Karlsson, T.; Andersson, L. +5 more

Quiet, discrete auroral arcs are an important and fundamental consequence of solar wind-magnetosphere interaction. We summarize the current standing of observations of such auroral arcs. We review the basic characteristics of the arcs, including occurrence in time and space, lifetimes, width and length, as well as brightness, and the energy of the…

Magnetic Reconnection Inside a Flux Rope Induced by Kelvin-Helmholtz Vortices

Liu, Y.; Russell, C. T.; Escoubet, C. P. +23 more

On 5 May 2017, MMS observed a crater-type flux rope on the dawnside tailward magnetopause with fluctuations. The boundary-normal analysis shows that the fluctuations can be attributed to nonlinear Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) waves. Reconnection signatures such as flow reversals and Joule dissipation were identified at the leading and trailing edges of t…

Magnetic field turbulence in the solar wind at sub-ion scales: in situ observations and numerical simulations

Hellinger, P.; Alexandrova, O.; Matteini, L. +5 more

We investigate the transition of the solar wind turbulent cascade from MHD to sub-ion range by means of a detail comparison between in situ observations and hybrid numerical simulations. In particular we focus on the properties of the magnetic field and its component anisotropy in Cluster measurements and hybrid 2D simulations. First, we address t…