Electron Vorticity Indicative of the Electron Diffusion Region of Magnetic Reconnection

Geophysical Research Letters - Tập 46 Số 12 - Trang 6287-6296 - 2019
Kyoung‐Joo Hwang1, E. Choi1, K. Dokgo1, J. L. Burch1, D. G. Sibeck2, B. L. Giles2, M. L. Goldstein3, W. R. Paterson2, C. J. Pollock4, Quanqi Shi5, H. S. Fu6, H. Hasegawa7, D. J. Gershman2, Y. V. Khotyaintsev8, R. B. Torbert9, R. E. Ergun10, J. Dorelli2, L. A. Avanov2,3, C. T. Russell11, R. J. Strangeway11
1Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, USA
2NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
3The Goddard Planetary Heliophysics Institute, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA
4Denali Scientific, LLC, Fairbanks, AK, USA
5School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University, Peking, China
6School of Science and Environment, Beihang University, Beijing, China
7Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Sagamihara, Japan
8Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala, Sweden
9Space Science Center, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA
10Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA
11Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Tóm tắt

AbstractWhile vorticity defined as the curl of the velocity has been broadly used in fluid and plasma physics, this quantity has been underutilized in space physics due to low time resolution observations. We report Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) observations of enhanced electron vorticity in the vicinity of the electron diffusion region of magnetic reconnection. On 11 July 2017 MMS traversed the magnetotail current sheet, observing tailward‐to‐earthward outflow reversal, current‐carrying electron jets in the direction along the electron meandering motion or out‐of‐plane direction, agyrotropic electron distribution functions, and dissipative signatures. At the edge of the electron jets, the electron vorticity increased with magnitudes greater than the electron gyrofrequency. The out‐of‐plane velocity shear along distance from the current sheet leads to the enhanced vorticity. This, in turn, contributes to the magnetic field perturbations observed by MMS. These observations indicate that electron vorticity can act as a proxy for delineating the electron diffusion region of magnetic reconnection.

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Geophysical Research Letters

Tập 46 Số 12

6287-6296

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