EGU21-14489
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14489
EGU General Assembly 2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Turbulent Plasma Jet Fronts and Related Ion Acceleration

Louis Richard1,2, Yuri Khotyaintsev1, Daniel Graham1, Olivier Le Contel3, Ian Cohen4, Drew Turner4, Barbara Giles5, Per-Arne Lindqvist6, and Christopher Russell7
Louis Richard et al.
  • 1Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Sweden (louisr@irfu.se)
  • 2Space and Plasma Physics, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Sweden
  • 3Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas, CNRS/Ecole Polytechnique IP Paris/Sorbonne Université/Université Paris Saclay/Observatoire de Paris, Paris, France
  • 4Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, USA
  • 5NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA
  • 6Space and Plasma Physics, School of Electrical Engineering, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
  • 7Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA,

We investigate an earthward bursty bulk flow (BBF) observed by the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) spacecraft in the Earth’s magnetotail (XGSM ~ -23.88 RE, YGSM ~ 6.72 RE, ZGSM ~ 4.06 RE). At  the leading edge of the BBF we observe a complex magnetic field structure. In particular, within this region we identify multiple dipolarization fronts (DFs) and large amplitude oscillations of the magnetic field BX, which correspond to a long wavelength current sheet flapping motion. Within the DFs, we observe increased fluxes of energetic ions and electrons. We investigate the trapping of the ions between two consecutive DFs. We discuss the ion acceleration mechanism and the adiabaticity of the ion energisation process.

How to cite: Richard, L., Khotyaintsev, Y., Graham, D., Le Contel, O., Cohen, I., Turner, D., Giles, B., Lindqvist, P.-A., and Russell, C.: Turbulent Plasma Jet Fronts and Related Ion Acceleration, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-14489, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14489, 2021.