American Geophysical Union Become an AGU Member
Subscribe to AGU Journals		 AGU Home AGU Publications

Read Full Article (file size: 1990868 bytes)    Cited by

JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 112, A11207, doi:10.1029/2007JA012252, 2007

Simultaneous observations of fluctuating cusp aurora and low-latitude magnetopause reconnection

S. A. Fuselier

Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center, Palo Alto, California, USA


S. M. Petrinec

Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center, Palo Alto, California, USA


K. J. Trattner

Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center, Palo Alto, California, USA


M. Fujimoto

Department of Earth and Planetary Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan


H. Hasegawa

Institute for Space and Astronautical Sciences, Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, Sagamihara, Japan


Abstract

The location and variability of magnetic reconnection are investigated using simultaneous in situ observations of boundary layer flows at the dayside magnetopause and remote sensing of proton cusp aurora in the ionosphere. Two events when the Geotail spacecraft was at the magnetopause and the Imager for Magnetopause to Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) spacecraft was observing cusp proton precipitation are used in this investigation. The directions of high-speed flows observed in the boundary layer by the Geotail spacecraft are compared to predicted directions from the antiparallel reconnection model and from two component reconnection models. The IMAGE cusp proton aurora observations provide additional information on the type of reconnection and on variability in the reconnection rate. For the first event, antiparallel reconnection may be occurring at the magnetopause and there is a long-duration (10 s of minutes) decrease in the proton aurora intensity. For the second event, component reconnection is occurring and variability in the cusp emissions on a timescale of several minutes appears to indicate variability in the reconnection rate.

Received 3 January 2007; accepted 27 July 2007; published 13 November 2007.

Keywords: magnetic reconnection; particle acceleration; magnetopause.

Index Terms: 7835 Space Plasma Physics: Magnetic reconnection (2723, 7526); 2724 Magnetospheric Physics: Magnetopause and boundary layers; 7807 Space Plasma Physics: Charged particle motion and acceleration; 2704 Magnetospheric Physics: Auroral phenomena (2407).

Read Full Article (file size: 1990868 bytes)    Cited by

Citation: Fuselier, S. A., S. M. Petrinec, K. J. Trattner, M. Fujimoto, and H. Hasegawa (2007), Simultaneous observations of fluctuating cusp aurora and low-latitude magnetopause reconnection, J. Geophys. Res., 112, A11207, doi:10.1029/2007JA012252.