Multiscale analysis of a current sheet crossing associated with a fast earthward flow during a substorm event detected by MMS
- 1CNRS, Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas UMR 7648, Paris, France (olivier.lecontel@lpp.polytechnique.fr)
- 2Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria
- 3Department of Earth Observation, European Space Agency, ESRIN, Frascati, Italy
- 4Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, Toulouse, France
- 5Departamento Electromagnetismo and Electronica, Universidad de Murcia, Murcia, Spain
- 6Space and Atmospheric Physics, Department of Physics Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College, London, UK
- 7Space Science Laboratory, Berkeley, USA
- 8NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
- 9Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, USA
- 10Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder, CO, USA
- 11Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala, Sweden
- 12Space Science Center and Department of Physics, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA
- *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract
In July 2017, the MMS constellation was evolving in the magnetotail with an apogee of 25 Earth radii and an average inter-satellite distance of 10 km (i.e. at electron scales). On 23rd of July around 16:19 UT, MMS was located at the edge of the current sheet which was in a quasi-static state. Then, MMS suddenly entered in the central plasma sheet and detected the local onset of a small substorm as indicated by the AE index (~400 nT). Fast plasma flows towards the Earth were measured for about 1 hour starting with a period of quasi-steady flow and followed by a series of saw-tooth plasma jets (“bursty bulk flows”). In the present study, we focus on a short sequence related to the crossing of an ion scale current sheet embedded in a fast earthward flow. The current sheet appears to be corrugated and with a significant guide field (BL/BM~0.5). Tailward propagating electrostatic solitary waves are detected just after the magnetic equator crossing and at the edge of the current sheet. We also analyze in detail an electron vortex magnetic hole also detected at the edge of this current sheet and discuss the Ohm’s law and energy conversion processes. We find that the energy dissipation associated with the electron vortex is three times greater (0.15nW/m3) than at the current sheet crossing (0.05nW/m3). Based on estimated statistical weight of these vortices we discuss possible consequences for the energy dissipation associated with fast earthward plasma flows.
S. Huang (13), J. L. Burch (9), R. B. Torbert (12), B. J. Giles (8), P.-A. Lindqvist (14), R. E. Ergun (10), Y. Khotyaintsev (11) F. D. Wilder (15), D. L. Turner (16), I. J. Cohen (16), H. Wei (17), R. J. Strangeway (17), K. R. Bromund (8), F. Plaschke (2)
How to cite: Le Contel, O., Retino, A., Alexandrova, A., Nakamura, R., Alqeeq, S., Baraka, M., Chust, T., Mirioni, L., Catapano, F., Jacquey, C., Toledo-Redondo, S., Stawarz, J., Goodrich, K., Gershman, D., Fuselier, S., Mukherjee, J., Ahmadi, N., Graham, D., Argall, M. R., and Fischer, D. and the A MMS Team: Multiscale analysis of a current sheet crossing associated with a fast earthward flow during a substorm event detected by MMS, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-9481, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-9481, 2022.
