4.6 Article

Kinetic-scale Current Sheets in the Solar Wind at 1 au: Scale-dependent Properties and Critical Current Density

Journal

ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS
Volume 926, Issue 2, Pages -

Publisher

IOP Publishing Ltd
DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ac4fc4

Keywords

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Funding

  1. Russian Science Foundation [21-12-00416]
  2. NASA Living With a Star [80NSSC20K1781, 80NSSC20K1788]
  3. National Science Foundation [2026680]
  4. Directorate For Geosciences [2026680] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
  5. Div Atmospheric & Geospace Sciences [2026680] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
  6. Russian Science Foundation [21-12-00416] Funding Source: Russian Science Foundation

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In this study, we analyzed proton kinetic-scale current sheets in the solar wind and found that smaller-scale current sheets have higher current density, but do not exceed the drift between ions and electrons of local Alven speed. This observation holds in normalized units.
We present analysis of 17,043 proton kinetic-scale current sheets (CSs) collected over 124 days of Wind spacecraft measurements in the solar wind at 11 samples s(-1) magnetic field resolution. The CSs have thickness, lambda, from a few tens to one thousand kilometers with typical values around 100 km, or within about 0.1-10 lambda(p) in terms of local proton inertial length, lambda(p) . We found that the current density is larger for smaller-scale CSs, J (0) approximate to 6 nAm(-2) center dot (lambda/100 km)(-0.56), but does not statistically exceed a critical value, J(A) , corresponding to the drift between ions and electrons of local Alven speed. The observed trend holds in normalized units: J(0)/J(A) approximate to 0.17 center dot(lambda/lambda(p))(-0.51) Delta theta approximate to 19 degrees center dot(lambda/lambda(p))(0.5)

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