Kinetic structure and wave properties associated with sharp dipolarization front observed by Cluster

By Shiyong Huang, Meng Zhou, X. Deng, Zhigang Yuan, Y. Pang, Q. Wei, W. Su, Haimeng Li, Q. Wang. 2012

145 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Multiple dipolarization fronts (DFs) were observed by Cluster spacecraft in the magnetotail during a substorm. These DFs were kinetic structures, embedded in the bursty plasma flow, and moved earthward (mainly) and dawnward. Intense electric field, parallel and perpendicular currents were detected in the DF layer. These front layers were energy dissipation region (load region) where the energy of electromagnetic fields were transferred to the plasma thermal and kinetic energy. This dissipation was dominated by electrons. There were enhancements of plasma waves around the DF region: wavelet results show that wave activities around the ion cyclotron frequency in the front layer were generated by Alfven ion cyclotron instability; whistler waves were also detected before, during and after the DFs, which are triggered by electron temperature anisotropy and coincident with enhancement of energetic electron fluxes. The observation of these waves could be important for the understanding of evolution of DF and electron energization during the substorm. We discuss the generation mechanism of the DFs and suggest that these DFs were generated in the process of transient reconnection, and then traveled toward the Earth.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1304370a634a26f4521e74c4a9c8714b0fd062f2

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. A. Runov
2. Xuzhi Zhou
3. Jiang Liu
4. V. Angelopoulos
5. Y. Khotyaintsev
6. Andris Vaivads
7. H. Fu
8. Wen Li

In Molecular Biology

1. A. Runov
2. Xuzhi Zhou
3. V. Angelopoulos
4. Jiang Liu
5. Andris Vaivads
6. Y. Khotyaintsev

Citations in the corpus

• Occurrence rate of earthward‐propagating dipolarization fronts (2012, background): “…including the lower hybrid drift, electron cyclotron [Zhou et al., 2009], and whistler mode [e.g., Deng et al., 2010; Khotyaintsev et al., 2011; Huang et al., 2012] are frequently observed; the electric structure [Zhang et al., 2011; Fu et al., 2012] together with the acceleration of electrons…”
• On the current sheets surrounding dipolarizing flux bundles in the magnetotail: The case for wedgelets (2013, background): “Embedded within BBFs and associated with significant flux transport, DFBs are also well correlated with energetic particle injections [Moore et al., 1981] and intense plasma waves [e.g., Sergeev et al., 2009; Huang et al., 2012].”