On the Signatures of Reconnection-Related Magnetic Islands at the Earth’s Magnetopause: New Perspectives from Magnetopause Observations and Particle-In-Cell Simulations

Eriksson, Stefan

On the Signatures of Reconnection-Related Magnetic Islands at the Earth’s Magnetopause: New Perspectives from Magnetopause Observations and Particle-In-Cell Simulations

Thursday, 13 July 2017: 11:00

Furong Room (Cynn Hotel)

Stefan Eriksson¹, Paul Cassak², David L Newman³, Andrew Paul Sturner¹ and Giovanni Lapenta⁴, (1)Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder, CO, United States, (2)West Virginia University, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Morgantown, WV, United States, (3)University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, (4)Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

Abstract:

Whether magnetic reconnection proceeds via a dominant single X line or to some extent via multiple competing X lines is a topic of great importance for our understanding of the structure and dynamics of the Earth’s magnetopause current sheet. A multiple X line scenario has been proposed in the literature as one of several mechanisms for the generation of magnetic flux ropes and “flux transfer events” at the magnetopause, while a patchy single X line mechanism was proposed by Russell and Elphic [Space Sci. Rev., 1978]. Here we present some new signatures of reconnection-related magnetic islands from particle-in-cell simulations and satellite observations by MMS, Polar and Themis.