Relationship between interplanetary parameters and the magnetopause reconnection rate quantified from observations of the expanding polar cap
By S. Milan, J. Gosling, B. Hubert. 2012
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[1] Many studies have attempted to quantify the coupling of energy from the solar wind into the magnetosphere. In this paper we parameterize the dependence of the magnetopause reconnection rate on interplanetary parameters from the OMNI data set. The reconnection rate is measured as the rate of expansion of the polar cap during periods when the nightside reconnection rate is thought to be low, determined from observations by the Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) Far Ultraviolet (FUV) imager. Our fitting suggests that the reconnection rate is determined by the magnetic flux transport in the solar wind across a channel approximately 4 RE in width, with a small correction dependent on the solar wind speed, and a clock angle dependence. The reconnection rate is not found to be significantly dependent on the solar wind density. Comparison of the modeled reconnection rate with SuperDARN measurements of the cross-polar cap potential provides broad support for the magnitude of the predictions. In the course of the paper we discuss the relationship between the dayside reconnection rate and the cross-polar cap potential.
Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atmospheric Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/232dc1dc5213d70dcd536f2d7375fb823bcee5c0
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In Astronomy and Astrophysics
Citations in the corpus
- Overview of Solar Wind–Magnetosphere–Ionosphere–Atmosphere Coupling and the Generation of Magnetospheric Currents (2017, methodology): “…been several attempts to predict the magnetopause reconnection rate, ΦD , from upstream conditions and in this study we use the parameterisation of Milan et al. (2012), in which ΦD = Leff VSWBYZ sin9/2 1 2 θ, (4) where θ is the IMF clock angle, B2YZ = B2Y +B2Z , and Leff is an effective length…”