Multi-scale investigations of magnetic reconnection and Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices

Hwang, Kyoung-Joo

Multi-scale investigations of magnetic reconnection and Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices

Thursday, 13 July 2017: 11:20

Furong Room (Cynn Hotel)

Kyoung-Joo Hwang¹, Eunjin Choi², David G Sibeck³, Barbara L Giles², Daniel J Gershman⁴, Craig J Pollock⁵, Robert Ergun⁶, Yuri V Khotyaintsev⁷, John Dorelli¹, Levon A Avanov², William R Paterson², Christopher T Russell⁸, Robert J Strangeway⁹ and Roy B Torbert¹⁰, (1)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Heliophysics Science Division, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (2)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (3)NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (4)University of Maryland College Park, College Park, MD, United States, (5)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Heliophysics Sci. Div., Greenbelt, MD, United States, (6)Univ Colorado, Boulder, CO, United States, (7)IRF Swedish Institute of Space Physics Uppsala, Uppsala, Sweden, (8)University of California Los Angeles, Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (9)University of California Los Angeles, IGPP/EPSS, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (10)University of New Hampshire Main Campus, Durham, NH, United States

Abstract:

Both observations and simulations indicate the frequent occurrence, often simultaneously, of current-driven magnetic reconnection and velocity shear driven flow vortices on the Earth’s dayside magnetopause. The MMS mission, launched in March, 2015, has emphasized multi-scale processes occurring throughout the Earth’s magnetosphere, helping unravel the mysteries of magnetic reconnection with unprecedented time-resolution measurements of particles and fields. MMS spacecraft observations not only enable the quantitative testing of micro and meso-scale reconnection physics but also permit the calculation of flow vorticities. Here we inspect MMS observations of magnetic reconnection and Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices to investigate multi-scale phenomena occurring on the magnetopause boundary and quantitative testing of micro and meso-scale physics. These dayside dynamics are key to the solar wind-magnetosphere coupling and Earth’s global current system, which will ultimately improve our ability in space weather forecasts under a variety of external interplanetary conditions and structures.