SM42A-04
MMS High-Resolution Observations of the Magnetopause Reconnection Layer
Thursday, 17 December 2015: 11:05
2018 (Moscone West)
Tai Phan1, James L Burch2, Roy B Torbert3, Craig J Pollock4, Daniel J Gershman4, Robert J Strangeway5, John Dorelli6, Michael A Shay7, Mitsuo Oka1, Barbara L Giles6, Robert Ergun8 and Frederick D Wilder8, (1)University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States, (2)Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, United States, (3)University of New Hampshire Main Campus, Durham, NH, United States, (4)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Heliophysics Sci. Div., Greenbelt, MD, United States, (5)University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (6)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (7)University of Delaware, Newark, DE, United States, (8)Univ Colorado, Boulder, CO, United States
Abstract:
The primary objective of the MMS mission is to explore and understand the fundamental plasma physics of magnetic reconnection. The mission provides unprecedented particle and field measurements at extremely high sampling rates by four spacecraft. Such measurements are required to resolve ion and electron physics in the reconnection layer. The dayside phase of the mission is designed to capture and transmit burst data from all reconnection events it encounters at the magnetopause and magnetosheath. In this presentation, we will discuss initial burst-mode observations of reconnection at the magnetopause, with emphasis on the structure and dynamics of the reconnection exhaust and its boundaries.
