SM51A-2524
Bursty Bulk Flow Turbulence as Observed by the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission
Friday, 18 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Julia E Stawarz1, Robert Ergun2, Katherine Goodrich3, Frederick D Wilder3, James L Burch4, Andrew Paul Sturner1, Justin Holmes1, David Malaspina5, Maria Usanova3, Roy B Torbert6, Per-Arne Lindqvist7, Yuri V Khotyaintsev8, Christopher T Russell9, Robert J Strangeway9, Craig J Pollock10, Werner Magnes11, Mark Chutter12, Jerry Needell13, David Rau12, Olivier Le Contel14 and Barbara L Giles15, (1)Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder, CO, United States, (2)Univ Colorado, Boulder, CO, United States, (3)University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, (4)Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, United States, (5)University of Colorado, Boulder, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder, CO, United States, (6)University of New Hampshire Main Campus, Durham, NH, United States, (7)KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, (8)IRF Swedish Institute of Space Physics Uppsala, Uppsala, Sweden, (9)University of California Los Angeles, IGPP/EPSS, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (10)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Heliophysics Sci. Div., Greenbelt, MD, United States, (11)Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria, (12)University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States, (13)Univ New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States, (14)Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas (UMR7648), CNRS/Ecole Polytechnique/UPMC/Univ. Paris Sud/Obs. de Paris, Paris, France, (15)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States
Abstract:
Bursty Bulk Flows (BBFs), thought to result from reconnection in the near Earth plasma sheet, transfer a significant amount of mass and energy to the inner magnetosphere. The BBF braking region occurs at roughly 10 RE as the flow encounters the dipolar field near Earth and must slow significantly and/or deflect. Previous studies using the THEMIS spacecraft observed electron phase space holes and double-layers in the BBF braking region and speculated that strong field-aligned currents generated by turbulence within the region created these structures. While evidence supporting the existence of turbulence within the region was found, the lack of small-scale spatial information from THEMIS made it difficult to characterize the turbulence and currents within the region. In the present study, BBF braking region observations from the recently launched Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission are examined. Characteristics of the turbulence are examined through statistical methods such as spatial and temporal correlation functions. Individual structures within the turbulence will also be examined using multi-spacecraft techniques to better characterize the currents, which may contribute to the formation of kinetic structures and dissipation of turbulent energy.
