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Publications

2017

Magnetic reconnection

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Plasma Transport Driven By The Three-Dimensional Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability, Xuanye Ma, Peter Delamere, Antonius Otto, Brandon Burkholder Oct 2017

Plasma Transport Driven By The Three-Dimensional Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability, Xuanye Ma, Peter Delamere, Antonius Otto, Brandon Burkholder

Publications

It has been well demonstrated that the nonlinear Kelvin‐Helmholtz (KH) instability plays a critical role for the solar wind interaction with the Earth's magnetosphere. Although the two‐dimensional KH instability has been fully explored during the past decades, more and more studies show the fundamental difference between the two‐ and three‐dimensional KH instability. For northward interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) conditions, the nonlinear KH wave that is localized in the vicinity of the equatorial plane can dramatically bend the magnetic field line, generating strong antiparallel magnetic field components at high latitudes in both North and South Hemispheres, which satisfy the onset condition …


Local Time Asymmetry Of Saturn's Magnetosheath Flows, B. Burkholder, P. A. Delamere, X. Ma, M. F. Thomsen, R. J. Wilson, F. Bagenal Jun 2017

Local Time Asymmetry Of Saturn's Magnetosheath Flows, B. Burkholder, P. A. Delamere, X. Ma, M. F. Thomsen, R. J. Wilson, F. Bagenal

Publications

Using gross averages of the azimuthal component of flow in Saturn's magnetosheath, we find that flows in the prenoon sector reach a maximum value of roughly half that of the postnoon side. Corotational magnetodisc plasma creates a much larger flow shear with solar wind plasma prenoon than postnoon. Maxwell stress tensor analysis shows that momentum can be transferred out of the magnetosphere along tangential field lines if a normal component to the boundary is present, i.e., field lines which pierce the magnetopause. A Kelvin‐Helmholtz unstable flow gives rise to precisely this situation, as intermittent reconnection allows the magnetic field to …


Imf Dependence Of Energetic Oxygen And Hydrogen Ion Distributions In The Near-Earth Magnetosphere, H. Luo, E. A. Kronberg, K. Nykyri, K. J. Trattner, P. W. Daly, G. X. Chen, A. M. Du, Y. S. Ge May 2017

Imf Dependence Of Energetic Oxygen And Hydrogen Ion Distributions In The Near-Earth Magnetosphere, H. Luo, E. A. Kronberg, K. Nykyri, K. J. Trattner, P. W. Daly, G. X. Chen, A. M. Du, Y. S. Ge

Publications

Energetic ion distributions in the near-Earth plasma sheet can provide important information for understanding the entry of ions into the magnetosphere and their transportation, acceleration, and losses in the near-Earth region. In this study, 11 years of energetic proton and oxygen observations (> ~274 keV) from Cluster/Research with Adaptive Particle Imaging Detectors were used to statistically study the energetic ion distributions in the near-Earth region. The dawn-dusk asymmetries of the distributions in three different regions (dayside magnetosphere, near-Earth nightside plasma sheet, and tail plasma sheet) are examined in Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The results show that the energetic ion distributions …