EGU23-12580, updated on 08 Jan 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-12580
EGU General Assembly 2023
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Study of kinetic processes based on MMS/Cluster joint measurements in the vicinity of the plasma sheet boundary layer

Olivier Le Contel1, Alessandro Retino1, Thomas Chust1, Konrad Steinvall2, Soboh Alqeeq1, Mohammed Baraka1, Patrick Canu1, Dominique Fontaine1, Laurent Mirioni1, Iannis Dandouras3, Christopher Carr4, Sergio Toledo-Redondo5, Andrew Fazakerley6, Natasha Doss6, Patrick Daly7, Stefan Kiehas8, Rumi Nakamura8, Yuri Khotyaintsev2, Frederick Wilder9, Narges Ahmadi10, and the Joint Cluster/MMS team*
Olivier Le Contel et al.
  • 1CNRS, Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas UMR 7648, Paris, France (olivier.lecontel@lpp.polytechnique.fr)
  • 2Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala, Sweden
  • 3Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, Toulouse, France
  • 4Space Magnetometer Laboratory, Imperial College, London, UK
  • 5Departamento Electromagnetismo and Electronica, Universidad de Murcia, Murcia, Spain
  • 6Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, Dorking, UK
  • 7Max-Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Goettingen, Germany
  • 8Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria
  • 9Physics faculty, University of Texas, Arlington, TX, USA
  • 10Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics, Colorado, USA
  • *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract

On 28th of August 2018 at 5:30 UT, MMS and Cluster were located in the magnetotail at about 16 earth radii (RE). They both suddenly crossed plasma interfaces. Located near the post midnight sector, Cluster transitioned from a cold plasma sheet to a hot plasma sheet associated with a quasi-parallel earthward flow 800 km/s whereas MMS, located at 4 RE duskward of Cluster, transitioned from a similar cold plasma sheet to the lobe region via a very short period in a hot plasma sheet associated with a vortex-like signature. At 05:50 UT MMS returned to a hot plasma sheet and also detected a quasi-parallel earthward flow ~ 400 km/s and increased energetic ion and electron fluxes. We use measurements from both missions during this conjunction to describe the possible large scale dynamics of the magnetotail as well as some associated kinetic processes. Energetic particle (>50keV) measurements from the two missions are compared. Furthermore, at ion scales, we investigate the possible role of ion fire-hose instability in the plasma flow reduction. At electron scales, we analyze fast and slow non linear electrostatic waves propagating tailward which are detected in the so called electron boundary layer as well as in the hot plasma sheet. We discuss their possible generation mechanisms and link with the large scale dynamics of the magnetotail.

Joint Cluster/MMS team:

D. J. Gershman (11), C. T. Russell (12), R. J. Strangeway (12), F. Plaschke (8), M. R. Argall (13), D. L. Turner (14), I. J. Cohen (14), J. L. Burch (15), R. B. Torbert (13), S. A. Fuselier (15), J. Mukherjee (15) , B. J Giles (11), R. E. Ergun (10), P.-A. Lindqvist (16), P. Escoubet (17)

How to cite: Le Contel, O., Retino, A., Chust, T., Steinvall, K., Alqeeq, S., Baraka, M., Canu, P., Fontaine, D., Mirioni, L., Dandouras, I., Carr, C., Toledo-Redondo, S., Fazakerley, A., Doss, N., Daly, P., Kiehas, S., Nakamura, R., Khotyaintsev, Y., Wilder, F., and Ahmadi, N. and the Joint Cluster/MMS team: Study of kinetic processes based on MMS/Cluster joint measurements in the vicinity of the plasma sheet boundary layer, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-12580, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-12580, 2023.