Distinct sources of particles near the cusp and the dusk flank of the magnetosphere

0453186 - ÚFA 2016 US eng A - Abstract
Grison, Benjamin - Berchem, J. - Trattner, K. - Lavraud, B. - Pitout, F. - Souček, Jan - Richard, R. - Laakso, H. - Masson, A. - Dunlop, M. - Dandouras, I. - Reme, H. - Fazakerley, A. - Daly, P.
Distinct sources of particles near the cusp and the dusk flank of the magnetosphere.
AGU Fall Meeting. San Francisco: American Geophysical Union, 2015. SM51D-2585.
[AGU Fall Meeting 2015. 14.12.2015-18.12.2015, San Francisco]
Institutional support: RVO:68378289
Keywords : magnetosphere * solar wind * magnetospheric cusps
Subject RIV: BL - Plasma and Gas Discharge Physics
https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm15/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/58429

At the magnetopause, the location of the magnetic reconnection sites depends on the orientation of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) in the solar wind: on the dayside magnetosphere for an IMF southward, on the lobes for an IMF northward and on the flanks for an IMF in the East-West direction. Since most of observations of reconnection events have sampled a limited region of space simultaneously it is still not yet know if the reconnection line is extended over large regions of the magnetosphere or if is patchy and made of many reconnection lines. We report a Cluster crossing on 5 January 2002 near the exterior cusp on the southern dusk side where we observe multiple sources of reconnection/injections. Using the time of flight technique on the upgoing and downgoing ions, which leads to energy dispersions, we obtain distances of the ion sources between 14 and 20 RE from the spacecraft. The slope of the ion energy dispersions confirmed these distances. Using Tsyganenko model, we find that these sources are located on the dusk flank, past the terminator.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0254050