Publication Date:
2017-10-31
Description:
In this paper we use the full armament of the MMS (Magnetospheric Multiscale) spacecraft to study magnetic reconnection in the turbulent magnetosheath downstream of a quasi-parallel bow shock. Contrarily to the magnetopause and magnetotail cases, only a few observations of reconnection in the magnetosheath have been reported. The case study in this paper presents, for the first time, both fluid-scale and kinetic-scale signatures of an ongoing reconnection in the turbulent magnetosheath. The spacecraft are crossing the reconnection inflow and outflow regions and the ion diffusion region (IDR). Inside the reconnection outflows D-shape ion distributions are observed. Inside the IDR mixing of ion populations, crescent-like velocity distributions and ion accelerations are observed. One of the spacecraft skims the outer region of the electron diffusion region (EDR), where parallel electric fields, energy dissipation/conversion, electron pressure tensor agyrotropy, electron temperature anisotropy and electron accelerations are observed. Some of the difficulties of the observations of magnetic reconnection in turbulent plasma are also outlined.
Print ISSN:
0148-0227
Topics:
Geosciences
,
Physics
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