7th Asia-Pacific Conference on Plasma Physics, 12-17 Nov, 2023 at Port Messe Nagoya

Identification and analysis of in-situ observations of magnetic reconnection inthe magnetosphere

H. Hasegawa1, M.R. Argall2, N. Aunai3, R. Bandyopadhyay4, N. Bessho5,6, I.J. Cohen7, R.E.
Denton8, J.C. Dorelli6, J. Egedal9, S.A. Fuselier10,11, P. Garnier12, V. Génot12, D.B. Graham13, K.J.
Hwang10, Y.V. Khotyaintsev13, D.B. Korovinskiy14, B. Lavraud12,22, Q. Lenouvel12, T.C. Li8, Y.-H.
Liu8, B. Michotte de Welle3, T.K.M. Nakamura15, D.S. Payne16, S.M. Petrinec17, Y. Qi18, A.C.
Rager6, P.H. Reiff19, J.M. Schroeder9, J.R. Shuster2, M.I. Sitnov7, G.K. Stephens7, M. Swisdak16,A.M. Tian20, R.B. Torbert10,21, K.J. Trattner18, and S. Zenitani14
1
Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, JAXA
2Space Science Center, University of New Hampshire
3
CNRS, Ecole polytechnique, Sorbonne Université
4
Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University
5
Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland
6
Heliophysics Science Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
7
Applied Physics Laboratory, The Johns Hopkins University
8
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Dartmouth College
9
Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison
10Southwest Research Institute11
University of Texas at San Antonio
12Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, CNRS, Université Paul Sabatier
13
Swedish Institute of Space Physics
14
Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences
15
Krimgen LLC
16
Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, University of Maryland
17
Lockheed Martin ATC
18
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado
19
Rice Space Institute, Rice University
20
Shandong Key Laboratory of Optical Astronomy and Solar-Terrestrial Environment, School ofSpace Science and Physics, Institute of Space Sciences, Shandong University
21
Physics Department, University of New Hampshire
22
Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux, Université Bordeaux, CNRS
e-mail (speaker): hase@stp.isas.jaxa.jp
Magnetic reconnection in planetary magnetospheres
plays a pivotal role in the transfer of solar wind mass andenergy to the magnetosphere and rapid release ofmagnetic energy from the magnetotail during the courseof magnetospheric substorms or explosive auroral
activity. It is, however, a nontrivial task to identify,visualize, and elucidate the physical processes at work inreconnection regions from in-situ measurements ofplasma particles and electromagnetic fields. Here, anoverview is given of how reconnection effects or regionsatglobal,magnetohydrodynamic-,ion-,
andelectron-scales can be identified and analyzed by use ofin-situ measurements by space probes in and around
Earth’s magnetosphere. A particular emphasis is placedon recent advances in the era of NASA’s MagnetosphericMultiscale mission, which has made, since the launch in2015, electron-scale, multi-point measurements in thenear-Earth space of magnetic reconnection in thecollisionless regime. The methodology for theidentification and analysis includes a variety of singleand multi-spacecraft data analysis techniques that are
key to revealing the context of in-situ observations ofmagnetic reconnection in space and for detecting andanalyzing the diffusion regions where ions and/or
electrons are demagnetized and magnetic energy isconverted to plasma energy. The presentation will bebased on an outcome of the ISSI international teamworkshop on “Magnetic Reconnection: Explosive
Energy Conversion in Space Plasmas”,[1] a review article
entitled “Advanced Methods for Analyzing In-Situ
Observations of Magnetic Reconnection”, which iscurrently under consideration for publication in Space
Science Reviews.
References[1] https://www.issibern.ch/workshops/magnetgeospace/