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Magnetotail reconnection onset caused by electron kinetics with a strong external driver
Magnetotail reconnection plays a crucial role in explosive energy conversion in geospace. Because of the lack of in-situ spacecraft observations, the onset mechanism of magnetotail reconnection, however, has been controversial for decades. The key question is whether magnetotail reconnection is exte...
| Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
| Lenguaje: | English |
| Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2020
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| Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7542433/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33028826 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18787-w |
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| author | Lu, San Wang, Rongsheng Lu, Quanming Angelopoulos, V. Nakamura, R. Artemyev, A. V. Pritchett, P. L. Liu, T. Z. Zhang, X.-J. Baumjohann, W. Gonzalez, W. Rager, A. C. Torbert, R. B. Giles, B. L. Gershman, D. J. Russell, C. T. Strangeway, R. J. Qi, Y. Ergun, R. E. Lindqvist, P.-A. Burch, J. L. Wang, Shui |
| author_facet | Lu, San Wang, Rongsheng Lu, Quanming Angelopoulos, V. Nakamura, R. Artemyev, A. V. Pritchett, P. L. Liu, T. Z. Zhang, X.-J. Baumjohann, W. Gonzalez, W. Rager, A. C. Torbert, R. B. Giles, B. L. Gershman, D. J. Russell, C. T. Strangeway, R. J. Qi, Y. Ergun, R. E. Lindqvist, P.-A. Burch, J. L. Wang, Shui |
| author_sort | Lu, San |
| collection | PubMed |
| description | Magnetotail reconnection plays a crucial role in explosive energy conversion in geospace. Because of the lack of in-situ spacecraft observations, the onset mechanism of magnetotail reconnection, however, has been controversial for decades. The key question is whether magnetotail reconnection is externally driven to occur first on electron scales or spontaneously arising from an unstable configuration on ion scales. Here, we show, using spacecraft observations and particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations, that magnetotail reconnection starts from electron reconnection in the presence of a strong external driver. Our PIC simulations show that this electron reconnection then develops into ion reconnection. These results provide direct evidence for magnetotail reconnection onset caused by electron kinetics with a strong external driver. |
| format | Online Article Text |
| id | pubmed-7542433 |
| institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2020 |
| publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
| record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
| spelling | pubmed-75424332020-10-19 Magnetotail reconnection onset caused by electron kinetics with a strong external driver Lu, San Wang, Rongsheng Lu, Quanming Angelopoulos, V. Nakamura, R. Artemyev, A. V. Pritchett, P. L. Liu, T. Z. Zhang, X.-J. Baumjohann, W. Gonzalez, W. Rager, A. C. Torbert, R. B. Giles, B. L. Gershman, D. J. Russell, C. T. Strangeway, R. J. Qi, Y. Ergun, R. E. Lindqvist, P.-A. Burch, J. L. Wang, Shui Nat Commun Article Magnetotail reconnection plays a crucial role in explosive energy conversion in geospace. Because of the lack of in-situ spacecraft observations, the onset mechanism of magnetotail reconnection, however, has been controversial for decades. The key question is whether magnetotail reconnection is externally driven to occur first on electron scales or spontaneously arising from an unstable configuration on ion scales. Here, we show, using spacecraft observations and particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations, that magnetotail reconnection starts from electron reconnection in the presence of a strong external driver. Our PIC simulations show that this electron reconnection then develops into ion reconnection. These results provide direct evidence for magnetotail reconnection onset caused by electron kinetics with a strong external driver. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-10-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7542433/ /pubmed/33028826 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18787-w Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| spellingShingle | Article Lu, San Wang, Rongsheng Lu, Quanming Angelopoulos, V. Nakamura, R. Artemyev, A. V. Pritchett, P. L. Liu, T. Z. Zhang, X.-J. Baumjohann, W. Gonzalez, W. Rager, A. C. Torbert, R. B. Giles, B. L. Gershman, D. J. Russell, C. T. Strangeway, R. J. Qi, Y. Ergun, R. E. Lindqvist, P.-A. Burch, J. L. Wang, Shui Magnetotail reconnection onset caused by electron kinetics with a strong external driver |
| title | Magnetotail reconnection onset caused by electron kinetics with a strong external driver |
| title_full | Magnetotail reconnection onset caused by electron kinetics with a strong external driver |
| title_fullStr | Magnetotail reconnection onset caused by electron kinetics with a strong external driver |
| title_full_unstemmed | Magnetotail reconnection onset caused by electron kinetics with a strong external driver |
| title_short | Magnetotail reconnection onset caused by electron kinetics with a strong external driver |
| title_sort | magnetotail reconnection onset caused by electron kinetics with a strong external driver |
| topic | Article |
| url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7542433/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33028826 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18787-w |
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