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On the Short-scale Spatial Variability of Electron Inflows in Electron-only Magnetic Reconnection in the Turbulent Magnetosheath Observed by MMS

Journal Article · · The Astrophysical Journal
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [3];  [1];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [8];  [7];  [9];  [10];  [9]
  1. University of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  2. Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
  3. Univ. of Delaware, Newark, DE (United States)
  4. Univ. of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI (United States)
  5. Northumbria University, Newcastle (United Kingdom)
  6. Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX (United States)
  7. Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
  8. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)
  9. Univ. of New Hampshire, Durham, NH (United States)
  10. Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

We investigate the detailed properties of electron inflow in an electron-only reconnection event observed by the four Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) spacecraft in the Earth's turbulent magnetosheath downstream of the quasi-parallel bow shock. The lack of ion coupling was attributed to the small-scale sizes of the current sheets, and the observed bidirectional super-Alfvénic electron jets indicate that the MMS spacecraft crossed the reconnecting current sheet on both sides of an active X-line. Remarkably, the MMS spacecraft observed the presence of large asymmetries in the two electron inflows, with the inflows (normal to the current sheet) on the two sides of the reconnecting current layer differing by as much as a factor of four. Furthermore, even though the four MMS spacecraft were separated by less than seven electron skin depths, the degree of inflow asymmetry was significantly different at the different spacecraft. The asymmetry in the inflow speeds was larger with increasing distances downstream from the reconnection site, and the asymmetry was opposite on the two sides of the X-line. We compare the MMS observations with a 2D kinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation and find that the asymmetry in the inflow speeds stems from in-plane currents generated via the combination of reconnection-mediated inflows and parallel flows along the magnetic separatrices in the presence of a large guide field.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Scientific User Facilities (SUF); National Science Foundation (NSF); National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
2423043
Journal Information:
The Astrophysical Journal, Journal Name: The Astrophysical Journal Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 948; ISSN 0004-637X
Publisher:
IOP PublishingCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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