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Multipoint Measurements of the Electron Jet of Symmetric Magnetic Reconnection with a Moderate Guide Field.

Authors :
Wilder FD
Ergun RE
Eriksson S
Phan TD
Burch JL
Ahmadi N
Goodrich KA
Newman DL
Trattner KJ
Torbert RB
Giles BL
Strangeway RJ
Magnes W
Lindqvist PA
Khotyaintsev YV
Source :
Physical review letters [Phys Rev Lett] 2017 Jun 30; Vol. 118 (26), pp. 265101. Date of Electronic Publication: 2017 Jun 29.
Publication Year :
2017

Abstract

We report observations from the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) satellites of the electron jet in a symmetric magnetic reconnection event with moderate guide field. All four spacecraft sampled the ion diffusion region and observed the electron exhaust. The observations suggest that the presence of the guide field leads to an asymmetric Hall field, which results in an electron jet skewed towards the separatrix with a nonzero component along the magnetic field. The jet appears in conjunction with a spatially and temporally persistent parallel electric field ranging from -3 to -5  mV/m, which led to dissipation on the order of 8  nW/m^{3}. The parallel electric field heats electrons that drift through it, and is associated with a streaming instability and electron phase space holes.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
1079-7114
Volume :
118
Issue :
26
Database :
MEDLINE
Journal :
Physical review letters
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
28707935
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.265101