Identification

Title

Characterization of magnetic flux contents for two flux transfer events from both in situ and ionospheric observations

Abstract

Flux transfer events (FTEs) are a type of magnetospheric phenomena that exhibit distinctive observational signatures from the in situ spacecraft measurements. They are generally believed to possess a magnetic field configuration of a magnetic flux rope and formed through magnetic reconnection at the dayside magnetopause, sometimes accompanied with enhanced plasma convection in the ionosphere. We examine two FTE intervals under the condition of southward interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) with a dawn-dusk component. We apply the Grad-Shafranov (GS) reconstruction method to the in situ measurements by the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) spacecraft to derive the magnetic flux contents associated with the FTE flux ropes. In particular, given a cylindrical magnetic flux rope configuration derived from the GS reconstruction, the magnetic flux content can be characterized by both the toroidal (axial) and poloidal fluxes. We then estimate the amount of magnetic flux (i.e., the reconnection flux) encompassed by the area "opened" in the ionosphere, based on the ground-based Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) observations. We find that for event 1, the FTE flux rope is oriented in the approximate dawn-dusk direction, and the amount of its total poloidal magnetic flux falls within the range of the corresponding reconnection flux. For event 2, the FTE flux rope is oriented in the north-south direction. Both the FTE flux and the reconnection flux have greater uncertainty. We provide a detailed description about a formation scenario of sequential magnetic reconnection between adjacent field lines based on the FTE flux rope configurations from our results.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7z03d9z

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

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keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

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End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2024-02-07T00:00:00Z

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Conformity

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Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact