Electron‐Scale Measurements of Dipolarization Front

Dipolarization front (DF)—a sharp boundary with scale of ion inertial length (c/ωpi) in the Earth's magnetotail—can also have fine structures at electron scale (c/ωpe). Such electron‐scale structures, determining the local energy conversion, have not been revealed by multispacecraft observation...

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Veröffentlicht in:Geophysical research letters 2018-05, Vol.45 (10), p.4628-4638
Hauptverfasser: Liu, C. M., Fu, H. S., Xu, Y., Khotyaintsev, Y. V., Burch, J. L., Ergun, R. E., Gershman, D. G., Torbert, R. B.
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:Dipolarization front (DF)—a sharp boundary with scale of ion inertial length (c/ωpi) in the Earth's magnetotail—can also have fine structures at electron scale (c/ωpe). Such electron‐scale structures, determining the local energy conversion, have not been revealed by multispacecraft observations so far, due to the large separation of spacecraft in previous studies. Here we report the first electron‐scale multispacecraft measurements of DF, using data from the recent Magnetospheric Multiscale mission. We find strong parallel currents only in the high‐density side of the DF but strong perpendicular currents across the whole DF. We find no parallel electric fields during the DF interval. Although DF is primarily an energy‐load region (E·J > 0), the electron‐scale currents could lead to a localized energy generation (E·J 
ISSN:0094-8276
1944-8007
1944-8007
DOI:10.1029/2018GL077928