Observations of the step-like accelerating processes of cold ions in the reconnection layer at the dayside magnetopause

Qinghe Zhang; Michael Lockwood; John C Foster; Qiugang Zong; Malcolm W Dunlop; Shunrong Zhang; Jøran Moen; Beichen Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.scib.2018.01.003

Observations of the step-like accelerating processes of cold ions in the reconnection layer at the dayside magnetopause

Sci Bull (Beijing). 2018 Jan 15;63(1):31-37. doi: 10.1016/j.scib.2018.01.003. Epub 2018 Jan 5.

Authors

Qinghe Zhang¹, Michael Lockwood², John C Foster³, Qiugang Zong⁴, Malcolm W Dunlop⁵, Shunrong Zhang³, Jøran Moen⁶, Beichen Zhang⁷

Affiliations

¹ Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Optical Astronomy and Solar-Terrestrial Environment, Institute of Space Sciences, Shandong University, Weihai 264209, China. Electronic address: [email protected].
² Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6BB, UK.
³ MIT Haystack Observatory, Westford, MA 01886, USA.
⁴ School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100087, China.
⁵ Space Sciences Division, SSTD, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Didcot OX11 0QX, UK.
⁶ Department of Physics, University of Oslo, Blindern 0316, Oslo, Norway.
⁷ SOA Key Laboratory for Polar Science, Polar Research Institute of China, Shanghai 200136, China.

PMID: 36658915
DOI: 10.1016/j.scib.2018.01.003

Abstract

Cold ions of plasmaspheric origin have been observed to abundantly appear in the magnetospheric side of the Earth's magnetopause. These cold ions could affect the magnetic reconnection processes at the magnetopause by changing the Alfvén velocity and the reconnection rate, while they could also be heated in the reconnection layer during the ongoing reconnections. We report in situ observations from a partially crossing of a reconnection layer near the subsolar magnetopause. During this crossing, step-like accelerating processes of the cold ions were clearly observed, suggesting that the inflow cold ions may be separately accelerated by the rotation discontinuity and slow shock inside the reconnection layer.

Keywords: Cold ions; Ion accelerations; Magnetic reconnection; Magnetopause.