Journal
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
Volume 43, Issue 11, Pages 5536-5544Publisher
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1002/2016GL069166
Keywords
magnetic reconnection; particle acceleration; magnetopause; flux rope; magnetospheric multiscale
Categories
Funding
- STFC (UK) [ST/K001051/1, ST/N000692/1]
- NSF [AGS-1103303]
- NASA at UC Berkeley [NNX13AD72G, NNX08AO83G]
- NASA at U Delaware [NNX15AW58G]
- CNES
- CNRS
- STFC [ST/K001051/1, ST/N000692/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Science and Technology Facilities Council [ST/K001051/1, ST/N000692/1] Funding Source: researchfish
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We report evidence for reconnection between colliding reconnection jets in a compressed current sheet at the center of a magnetic flux rope at Earth's magnetopause. The reconnection involved nearly symmetric inflow boundary conditions with a strong guide field of two. The thin (2.5 ion-skin depth (d(i)) width) current sheet (at similar to 12 d(i) downstream of the X line) was well resolved by MMS, which revealed large asymmetries in plasma and field structures in the exhaust. Ion perpendicular heating, electron parallel heating, and density compression occurred on one side of the exhaust, while ion parallel heating and density depression were shifted to the other side. The normal electric field and double out-of-plane (bifurcated) currents spanned almost the entire exhaust. These observations are in good agreement with a kinetic simulation for similar boundary conditions, demonstrating in new detail that the structure of large guide field symmetric reconnection is distinctly different from antiparallel reconnection.
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