On the short-scale spatial variability of electron inflows in electron-only magnetic reconnection in the turbulent magnetosheath observed by MMS
- 1Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
- 2University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 19716, USA
- 3Department of Physics, Imperial College London, London, UK
- 4Department of Physics and Astronomy and Center for KINETIC Plasma Physics, West Virginia, University, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA
- 5University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA
- 6Department of Physics and the Institute for Physical Science and Technology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA
- 7Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA
- 8Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio TX 78238, USA
- 9University of Colorado LASP, Boulder, CO, 80303, USA
- 10NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
- 11University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA
- 12Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
In the Earth’s turbulent magnetosheath downstream of the quasiparallel bow shock region, magnetic reconnection without ion coupling was observed with bi-directional super-Alfvénic electron jets. The lack of ion coupling was attributed to the small-scale sizes of the current sheets. In an electron-only reconnection event that occurred on 26 December 2016, we examine the detailed properties of electron inflows observed by all 4 MMS spacecraft. Even though the farthest MMS probe in the outflow direction from the X-line was no more than 8 electron skin depth, the electron inflows have significant asymmetry and highly variable amplitudes. We compare MMS observations with 2D-kinetic PIC simulation and find that the asymmetry in the inflow stems directly from the tilt of the out-of-plane (guide) magnetic field structure in the reconnection plane, with inflow asymmetry enhanced in the downstream region.
How to cite: Pyakurel, P., Phan, T., Shay, M., Stawarz, J., Øieroset, M., Cassak, P., Haggerty, C., Drake, J., Li, T. C., Burch, J., Ergun, R., Gershman, D., Giles, B., Torbert, R., Strangeway, R., and Russell, C.: On the short-scale spatial variability of electron inflows in electron-only magnetic reconnection in the turbulent magnetosheath observed by MMS, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-10186, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-10186, 2022.
