| Autor: |
M. Øieroset, T. D. Phan, M. Oka, J. F. Drake, S. A. Fuselier, D. J. Gershman, K. Maheshwari, B. L. Giles, Q. Zhang, F. Guo, J. L. Burch, R. B. Torbert, R. J. Strangeway |
| Jazyk: |
angličtina |
| Rok vydání: |
2023 |
| Předmět: |
|
| Zdroj: |
The Astrophysical Journal, Vol 954, Iss 2, p 118 (2023) |
| Druh dokumentu: |
article |
| ISSN: |
1538-4357 |
| DOI: |
10.3847/1538-4357/acdf44 |
| Popis: |
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. |
| Databáze: |
Directory of Open Access Journals |
| Externí odkaz: |
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