Dual-spacecraft reconstruction of a three-dimensional magnetic flux rope at the Earth's magnetopause

Hasegawa, H.; Sonnerup, B. U. Ö.; Eriksson, S.; Nakamura, T. K. M.; Kawano, H.

doi:10.5194/angeo-33-169-2015

Title: Dual-spacecraft reconstruction of a three-dimensional magnetic flux rope at the Earth's magnetopause

Journal Article · Tue Feb 03 00:00:00 EST 2015 · Annales Geophysicae (Online)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-33-169-2015· OSTI ID:1201430

^[1]; Sonnerup, B. U. Ö. ^[2]; Eriksson, S. ^[3]; Nakamura, T. K. M. ^[4]; Kawano, H. ^[5]

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Sagamihara (Japan). Institute of Space and Astronautical Science.
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (United States)
Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz (Austria)

We present the first results of a data analysis method, developed by Sonnerup and Hasegawa (2011), for reconstructing three-dimensional (3-D), magnetohydrostatic structures from data taken as two closely spaced satellites traverse the structures. The method is applied to a magnetic flux transfer event (FTE), which was encountered on 27 June 2007 by at least three (TH-C, TH-D, and TH-E) of the five THEMIS probes near the subsolar magnetopause. The FTE was sandwiched between two oppositely directed reconnection jets under a southward interplanetary magnetic field condition, consistent with its generation by multiple X-line reconnection. The recovered 3-D field indicates that a magnetic flux rope with a diameter of ~ 3000 km was embedded in the magnetopause. The FTE flux rope had a significant 3-D structure, because the 3-D field reconstructed from the data from TH-C and TH-D (separated by ~ 390 km) better predicts magnetic field variations actually measured along the TH-E path than does the 2-D Grad–Shafranov reconstruction using the data from TH-C (which was closer to TH-E than TH-D and was at ~ 1250 km from TH-E). Such a 3-D nature suggests that the field lines reconnected at the two X-lines on both sides of the flux rope are entangled in a complicated way through their interaction with each other. The generation process of the observed 3-D flux rope is discussed on the basis of the reconstruction results and the pitch-angle distribution of electrons observed in and around the FTE.

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Research Organization:: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE

OSTI ID:: 1201430

Journal Information:: Annales Geophysicae (Online), Vol. 33, Issue 2; Related Information: The Supplement related to this article is available online at doi:10.5194/angeo-33-169-2015-supplement; ISSN 1432-0576

Publisher:: European Geophysical UnionCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 12 works

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