Minor Ion and Electron Characteristics within Magnetosheath Flux Transfer Events Observed by the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission
- 1Lockheed Martin ATC, Solar and Space Physics, Palo Alto, United States of America (steven.m.petrinec@lmco.com)
- 2Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, USA
- 3NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL, USA
- 4Space Science Center, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA
- 5University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA
- 6NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
- 7Earth and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
- 8Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA
- 9The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, USA
Several dayside magnetosheath flux transfer events (FTEs) have been observed at high temporal resolution by the four-spacecraft MMS mission. In this study, we examine ion energy spectrograms, ion moments, and ion distribution functions for several long duration magnetosheath FTEs observed by MMS. For these cases, the spacecraft were positioned at similar locations (i.e., south of the equatorial plane, post-noon local time sector). The ion observations are placed in context with electron energy spectrograms parallel and anti-parallel to the observed magnetic field and the location of MMS relative to the predicted reconnection line location as determined from convected solar wind conditions. This combined set of observations provide important information on the formation, topologies, and evolution of FTEs.
How to cite: Petrinec, S., Burch, J., Chandler, M., Farrugia, C., Fuselier, S., Giles, B., Gomez, R., Mukherjee, J., Paterson, W., Russell, C., Sibeck, D., Strangeway, R., Torbert, R., Trattner, K., Vines, S., and Zhao, C.: Minor Ion and Electron Characteristics within Magnetosheath Flux Transfer Events Observed by the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-20941, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-20941, 2020.