Multipoint Measurements of the Electron Jet of Symmetric Magnetic Reconnection with a Moderate Guide Field

F. D. Wilder, R. E. Ergun, S. Eriksson, T. D. Phan, J. L. Burch, N. Ahmadi, K. A. Goodrich, D. L. Newman, K. J. Trattner, R. B. Torbert, B. L. Giles, R. J. Strangeway, W. Magnes, P.-A. Lindqvist, and Yu-V. Khotyaintsev

Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 265101 – Published 29 June 2017

Abstract

We report observations from the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) satellites of the electron jet in a symmetric magnetic reconnection event with moderate guide field. All four spacecraft sampled the ion diffusion region and observed the electron exhaust. The observations suggest that the presence of the guide field leads to an asymmetric Hall field, which results in an electron jet skewed towards the separatrix with a nonzero component along the magnetic field. The jet appears in conjunction with a spatially and temporally persistent parallel electric field ranging from $- 3$ to $- 5 mV / m$ , which led to dissipation on the order of $8 nW {/ m}^{3}$ . The parallel electric field heats electrons that drift through it, and is associated with a streaming instability and electron phase space holes.

Received 4 April 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.265101

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Magnetic reconnection Particle acceleration in plasmas Space science

Plasma Physics

Authors & Affiliations

F. D. Wilder¹, R. E. Ergun^1,2, S. Eriksson¹, T. D. Phan³, J. L. Burch⁴, N. Ahmadi¹, K. A. Goodrich^1,2, D. L. Newman⁵, K. J. Trattner¹, R. B. Torbert⁶, B. L. Giles⁷, R. J. Strangeway⁸, W. Magnes⁹, P.-A. Lindqvist¹⁰, and Yu-V. Khotyaintsev¹¹

¹Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80303, USA
²Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80303, USA
³Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
⁴Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas 78238, USA
⁵Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80303, USA
⁶Department of Physics, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire 03824, USA
⁷NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA
⁸Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA
⁹Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz 8042, Austria
¹⁰Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm SE-11428, Sweden
¹¹Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala SE-751, Sweden