Auroral evidence for multiple reconnection in the magnetospheric tail plasma sheet

We present auroral evidence for multiple and, most probably, small-scale reconnection in the near-Earth magnetospheric plasma sheet current layer during auroral activity. Hall currents as the source of upward and downward field-aligned currents require the generation of the corresponding electron fluxes. The auroral spatial ordering in a multiple sequence of these fluxes requires the assumption of the existence of several -and possibly-even many tailward reconnection sites. Copyright (C) EPLA, 2009