Plasma Characteristics and Transport in the Near-Lunar Magnetotail: Observations from THEMIS/ARTEMIS

Abstract:

The region of the Earth’s magnetosphere tailward of ~30 R_E remains relatively unexplored. A better characterization of the processes taking place in the mid-to-distant magnetotail is critical to a more complete understanding of the coupling between the solar wind and the Earth’s magnetosphere. Similarly, an assessment of the magnetotail plasma encountered by the Moon will be valuable for understanding how the lunar environment is modified during these traversals. The THEMIS/ARTEMIS missions have returned sufficient data from this region of the magnetotail for a large-scale statistical survey to be undertaken with the publicly available data from NASA/CDAWeb. In this study various plasma moments are organized by occurrence frequency and location in the magnetotail. Further sorting is done to identify different regions within the magnetotail, such as the tail lobes and plasma sheet, and the physical processes taking place, such as reconnection. Additional sorting of the ion data has been required in order to identify intervals in the tail lobe where the signal-to-noise is so low that moments are erroneously calculated from just background counts. Initial results indicate that previous studies of the mid-to-distant magnetotail that were limited to using electron moments from the ISEE-3 mission overestimated Alfven Mach numbers. Super-Alfvenic flows, such as those associated with reconnection, are very rare in this region of the magnetotail. This survey is the first step in constructing a comprehensive large-scale picture of the energization, distribution, and transport of plasma in the mid-to-distant magnetotail, as well as characterizing the properties of the plasma environments encountered by the Moon during magnetotail traversals.