Magnetic reconnection at the high-latitude magnetopause is studied using 2.5-dimensional Hall-MHD simulation. Concentric flow vortices and magnetic islands appear when both Hall effect and sheared flow are considered. Plasma mixing across the magnetopause occurs in the presence of the flow vortices. Reconnected structure generated in the vicinity of the subsolar point changes its geometry with increasing flow shear while moving to high latitudes. In the presence of flow shear, with the Hall-MHD reconnection a higher reconnection rate than with the traditional MHD is obtained. The out-of-plane components of flow and magnetic field produced by the Hall current are redistributed under the action of the flow shear, which makes the plasma transport across the boundaries more complicated. The simulation results provide some help in understanding the dynamic processes at the high latitude magnetopause.
PU Zuyin1, SHI Quanqi1,3, XIAO Chijie1, FU Suiyan1, ZHANG Hui1,2, ZONG Qiugang2 & LIU Zhenxing3 1. School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
With energetic ion measurements on FAST satellite, the morphologic features of quiet-time ionospheric O+ ion upflowing at altitudes of 2000 to 4000 km are drawn out for the first time. The pre-noon cusp/cleft is the predominant region of upflowing occurrence for O+ with lower energy. Meanwhile the pre-dawn sector near the equatorward edge of the plasma convection dominates the occurrence for the higher energy O+ ions. No matter whether the energy is lower or higher, the upflows occur often over a wide MLT range of lower latitudes outside the auroral oval. The upflowing within the pre-midnight (21:00― 22:00 MLT) auroral oval carrys larger energy fluxes, with extremely large fluxes for higher energy O+ appearing near the polar cap boundary. For altitudes of 2000―4200 km under observation, the ion conics occur much more frequently than ion beams. Ion beams are rarely found below 3000 km, while the conics occur uniformly over the observed altitudes.
Magnetic reconnection is a main process converting the magnetic energy into thermal and kinetic energy in plasmas. It is one of the fundamental problems of crucial importance not only to space plasmas physics and space weather studies,such as the solar flare,coronal mass ejections and magnetospheric substorms,but also to the stability analysis in magnetically confined fusion. In general,except for cases with periodical boundary conditions,three-dimensional(3D) magnetic re-connection occurs on magnetic separatrices generated by magnetic nulls. Here we briefly introduce/review the theories and some recent satellite observations of 3D magnetic reconnection. Topics to be further studied are also discussed.
