Search

We survey 20 reconnection outflow events observed by Magnetospheric MultiScale in the low- β and high-Alfvén-speed regime of the Earth’s magnetotail to investigate the scaling of ion bulk heating produced by reconnection. The range of inflow Alfvén speeds (800–4000 km s ^−1 ) and inflow ion β (0.002–1) covered by this study is in a plasma regime that could be applicable to the solar corona and flare environments. We find that the observed ion heating increases with increasing inflow (upstream) Alfvén speed, V _A , based on the reconnecting magnetic field and the upstream plasma density. However, ion heating does not increase linearly as a function of available magnetic energy per particle, ${{{m}}_{{\rm{i}}}{{V}}_{{\rm{A}}}}^{2}$ . Instead, the heating increases progressively less as ${{{m}}_{{\rm{i}}}{{V}}_{{\rm{A}}}}^{2}$ rises. This is in contrast to a previous study using the same data set, which found that electron heating in this high-Alfvén-speed and low- β regime scales linearly with ${{{m}}_{{\rm{i}}}{{V}}_{{\rm{A}}}}^{2}$ , with a scaling factor nearly identical to that found for the low- V _A and high- β magnetopause. Consequently, the ion-to-electron heating ratio in reconnection exhausts decreases with increasing upstream V _A , suggesting that the energy partition between ions and electrons in reconnection exhausts could be a function of the available magnetic energy per particle. Finally, we find that the observed difference in ion and electron heating scaling may be consistent with the predicted effects of a trapping potential in the exhaust, which enhances electron heating, but reduces ion heating.

We have surveyed 21 reconnection exhaust events observed by Magnetospheric MultiScale in the low-plasma- β and high-Alfvén-speed regime of the Earth’s magnetotail to investigate the scaling of electron bulk heating produced by reconnection. The ranges of inflow Alfvén speed and inflow electron β _e covered by this study are 800–4000 km s ^−1 and 0.001–0.1, respectively, and the observed heating ranges from a few hundred electronvolts to several kiloelectronvolts. We find that the temperature change in the reconnection exhaust relative to the inflow, Δ T _e , is correlated with the inflow Alfvén speed, V _Ax,in , based on the reconnecting magnetic field and the inflow plasma density. Furthermore, Δ T _e is linearly proportional to the inflowing magnetic energy per particle, ${{m}_{{\rm{i}}}{V}_{\mathrm{Ax},\mathrm{in}}}^{2}$ , and the best fit to the data produces the empirical relation Δ T _e = 0.020 ${{m}_{{\rm{i}}}{V}_{\mathrm{Ax},\mathrm{in}}}^{2}$ , i.e., the electron temperature increase is on average ∼2% of the inflowing magnetic energy per particle. This magnetotail study extends a previous magnetopause reconnection study by two orders of magnitude in both magnetic energy and electron β , to a regime that is comparable to the solar corona. The validity of the empirical relation over such a large combined magnetopause–magnetotail plasma parameter range of V _A ∼ 10–4000 km s ^−1 and β _e ∼ 0.001–10 suggests that one can predict the magnitude of the bulk electron heating by reconnection in a variety of contexts from the simple knowledge of a single parameter: the Alfvén speed of the ambient plasma.

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.

We report observations of multiple subscale reconnecting current sheets embedded inside a large-scale heliospheric current sheet (HCS) reconnection exhaust. The discovery was made possible by the unusual skimming trajectory of Parker Solar Probe through a sunward-directed HCS exhaust, sampling structures convecting with the exhaust outflows for more than 3 hr during Encounter 14, at a radial distance of ∼17 solar radii. A large number of subscale current sheets (SCSs) were detected inside the HCS exhaust. Remarkably, five SCSs showed direct evidence for reconnection, displaying near-Alfvénic outflow jets and bifurcated current sheets. The reconnecting SCSs all had small magnetic shears (27°–81°), i.e., strong guide fields. The thickness of the subscale reconnecting current sheets ranged from ∼60 km to ∼5000 km (∼20–2000 ion inertial lengths). The SCS exhausts were directed predominantly in the normal or out-of-plane direction of the HCS, i.e., nearly orthogonal to the HCS exhaust direction. The presence of multiple low-magnetic-shear reconnecting current sheets inside a large-scale exhaust could be associated with coalescence of multiple large flux ropes inside the HCS exhaust. The orientation of some SCS exhausts was partly in the ecliptic plane of the HCS, which may indicate that the coalescence process is highly three-dimensional. Since the coalescence process is likely short-lived, the detection of five such events inside a single HCS crossing could imply the common occurrence of flux rope coalescence in large-scale HCS reconnection exhausts.

We report observations of reconnection exhausts in the Heliospheric Current Sheet (HCS) during Parker Solar Probe Encounters 08 and 07, at 16 R s and 20 R s , respectively. Heliospheric current sheet (HCS) reconnection accelerated protons to almost twice the solar wind speed and increased the proton core energy by a factor of ∼3, due to the Alfvén speed being comparable to the solar wind flow speed at these near-Sun distances. Furthermore, protons were energized to super-thermal energies. During E08, energized protons were found to have leaked out of the exhaust along separatrix field lines, appearing as field-aligned energetic proton beams in a broad region outside the HCS. Concurrent dropouts of strahl electrons, indicating disconnection from the Sun, provide further evidence for the HCS being the source of the beams. Around the HCS in E07, there were also proton beams but without electron strahl dropouts, indicating that their origin was not the local HCS reconnection exhaust., (© 2022. The Authors.)