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GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 34, L15101, doi:10.1029/2007GL029693, 2007

Atypical current sheets and plasma bubbles: A self-consistent kinetic model

M. I. Sitnov

Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA


P. N. Guzdar

Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA


M. Swisdak

Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA


Abstract

As revealed by CLUSTER observations, thin current sheets in the magnetotail may strongly differ from the conventional Harris profile due to the effects of embedding and bifurcation. At the same time, they often have no signatures of collisionless magnetic reconnection. A universal phenomenon involving such atypical current sheets, which is connected but not identical to reconnection, is the formation of plasma bubbles. We present a self-consistent kinetic model of plasma bubbles based on a 2-D generalization of earlier atypical current sheet models that also takes into account the south-then-north sense of B z perturbations typical for earthward traveling compression regions and fast flows in the central plasma sheet. The new model predicts that the dominant structural element of bubbles is a region of the local reduction of the cross-tail current provided by the current bifurcation effect.

Received 15 February 2007; accepted 7 June 2007; published 1 August 2007.

Keywords: bursty convection; plasma bubbles; thin current sheets.

Index Terms: 2744 Magnetospheric Physics: Magnetotail; 2760 Magnetospheric Physics: Plasma convection (2463); 2764 Magnetospheric Physics: Plasma sheet; 7827 Space Plasma Physics: Kinetic and MHD theory.

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Citation: Sitnov, M. I., P. N. Guzdar, and M. Swisdak (2007), Atypical current sheets and plasma bubbles: A self-consistent kinetic model, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L15101, doi:10.1029/2007GL029693.