Journal
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS
Volume 94, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.025006
Keywords
-
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Anisotropic electron phase space distributions, f, measured by the Wind spacecraft in a rare crossing of a diffusion region in Earth's far magnetotail (60 Earth radii), are analyzed. We use the measured f to probe the electrostatic and magnetic geometry of the diffusion region. For the first time, the presence of a strong electrostatic potential (1 kV) within the ion diffusion region is revealed. This potential has far reaching implications for the reconnection process; it accounts for the observed acceleration of the unmagnetized ions out of the reconnection region and it causes all thermal electrons be trapped electrostatically. The trapped electron motion implies that the thermal part of the electron distributions are symmetric around v(parallel to)=0: f(v(parallel to),v(perpendicular to))similar or equal tof(-v(parallel to),v(perpendicular to)). It follows that the field aligned currents in the diffusion region are limited and fast magnetic reconnection is mediated.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available