Structure of the current sheets in the near-Mars magnetotail. Maven observations

During the last 15 years, the Current Sheets (CSs) have been intensively studied in the tail of the terrestrial magnetosphere, where protons are the dominated ion component. On the contrary, in the Martian magnetotail heavy ions (O⁺ and⁺ ₀) usually dominate while the abundance of protons can be negligible. Hence it is interesting to study the spatial structure and plasma characteristics of such “oxygen” CSs. MAVEN spacecraft (s/c) currently operating on the Martian orbit with a unique set of scientific instruments allows observation of the magnetic field and three-dimensional distribution functions of various ion components and electrons with a high time resolution. In this paper, we analyse nine intervals of the CSs observed by MAVEN in the near-Mars tail at the distances from the planet ~1.5–1R _M , where R _M is the radius of Mars. We analyse the spatial structure of the CSs and estimate their thickness for different magnetic configurations and relative abundance of the heavy and light ions in the sheets. It is shown that, similarly to the CSs in the Earth’s magnetotail, the thickness and complexity of the spatial structure of the Maritan CSs (i.e. the presence of embedded and / or peripheral current structures) depend on the magnetic configuration of the sheets, which, in turn, affects the fraction of the quasi-adiabatic particles in the CSs.     

Influence of Oxygen Ions on the Structure of the Thin Current Sheet in the Earth’s Magnetotail

Geomagnetism and Aeronomy - During geomagnetic substorms, the current sheet in the Earth’s magnetotail can transversely reduce in thickness from a few radii of the Earth (RE) to one to...     

The catastrophic flood of the Neva River in 1924

Doklady Earth Sciences -     

Modeling of Proton Acceleration in a Magnetic Island Inside the Ripple of the Heliospheric Current Sheet

Crossings of the heliospheric current sheet (HCS) at the Earth’s orbit are often associated with observations of anisotropic beams of energetic protons accelerated to energies from hundreds of keV to several MeV and above. A connection between this phenomenon and the occurrence of small-scale magnetic islands (SMIs) near reconnecting current sheets has recently been found. This study shows how pre-accelerated protons can be energized additionally due to oscillations of multiple SMIs inside the ripple of the reconnecting HCS. A model of the electromagnetic field of an oscillating 3D SMI with a characteristic size of ~0.001 AU is developed. A SMI is supposed to be bombarded by protons accelerated by magnetic reconnection at the HCS to energies from ~1keV to tens of keV. Numerical simulations have demonstrated that the resulting longitudinal inductive electric fields can additionally reaccelerate protons injected into a SMI. It is shown that there is a local “acceleration” region within the island in which particles gain energy most effectively. As a result, their average escape energies range from hundreds of keV to 2 MeV and above. There is almost no particle acceleration outside the region. It is shown that energies gained by protons significantly depend on the initial phase and the place of their entry into a SMI but weakly depend on the initial energy. Therefore, low-energy particles can be accelerated more efficiently than high-energy particles, and all particles can reach the total energy limit upon their escape from a SMI. It is also found that the escape velocity possesses a strong directional anisotropy. The results are consistent with observations in the solar wind plasma.

     

Asymmetry effect on the development of instabilities in current sheets

The possibility of the development of tearing and kink instabilities (with symmetric and asymmetric modes) in anisotropic thin current sheets (CSs) is investigated. The profiles of perturbed vector potentials and the instability growth rates have been found for the Vlasov equations in the approximation of a linear perturbation theory. The effect of plasma anisotropy and CS asymmetry on the development of these instabilities in the sheet is investigated.