MMS-Cluster conjugate observation of disturbance in the current sheet associated with localized fast flow in the near-Earth magnetotail

Rumi Nakamura; Wolfgang Baumjohann; Joachim Birn; Jim Burch; Chris Carr; Iannis Dandouras; Philippe Escoubet; Andrew Fazakerley; Barbara Giles; Marina Kubyshkina; Olivier Le Contel; Tsugunobu Nagai; Takuma Nakamura; Evgeny Panov; Chris Russell; Victor Sergeev; Roy Torbert

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-3254

[Back] [Session ST2.3]

EGU2020-3254, updated on 08 Jan 2024

https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-3254

EGU General Assembly 2020

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

MMS-Cluster conjugate observation of disturbance in the current sheet associated with localized fast flow in the near-Earth magnetotail

Rumi Nakamura¹, Wolfgang Baumjohann¹, Joachim Birn², Jim Burch³, Chris Carr⁴, Iannis Dandouras⁵, Philippe Escoubet⁶, Andrew Fazakerley⁷, Barbara Giles⁸, Marina Kubyshkina⁹, Olivier Le Contel¹⁰, Tsugunobu Nagai¹¹, Takuma Nakamura¹, Evgeny Panov¹, Chris Russell¹², Victor Sergeev⁹, and Roy Torbert^3,13

Rumi Nakamura et al.

¹Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria
²Space Science Institute, Boulder, CO, USA
³Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas, USA.
⁴The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, London, UK.
⁵Centre National de la Recherche Scientiﬁque, Toulouse, France.
⁶ESA/ESTEC, Nordwijk, The Netherlands
⁷Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, Dorking, UK
⁸NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, USA.
⁹St. Petersburg University, St. Petersburg, Russia
¹⁰Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas, CNRS/Ecole Polytechnique/UPMC Univ Paris 06/University Paris-Sud/Observatoire de Paris, Paris, France
¹¹ISAS/JAXA, Sagamihara, Japan
¹²IGPP, UCLA, Los Angeles, USA
¹³Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, University New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire, USA

We report the evolution of the current sheet associated with a localized flow burst in the near-Earth magnetotail on Sep. 8, 2018 around 14 UT when MMS (Magnetospheric Multiscale) and Cluster at about X=17 RE, separated mainly in the dawn-dusk direction at a distance of about 4 RE, encountered at duskside and dawnside part of a dipolarization front, respectively. We analyzed the mesoscale current sheet disturbances based on multi-point data analysis between Cluster and MMS. It is shown that the current sheet thickens associated with the passage of the dipolarization front confirming results from previous statistical studies. The thickness of the current sheet, however, decreased subsequently, before recovering toward the original configuration. MMS observed enhanced field aligned currents exclusively during this thinning of the current sheet at the off-equatorial region. Multiple layers of small-scale, intense field-aligned currents accompanied by enhanced Hall-currents were detected at this region. Based on these mesoscale and microscale multipoint observations, we infer the current structures around the localized flow and discuss the role of these mesoscale flow processes in the larger-scale magnetotail dynamics.

How to cite: Nakamura, R., Baumjohann, W., Birn, J., Burch, J., Carr, C., Dandouras, I., Escoubet, P., Fazakerley, A., Giles, B., Kubyshkina, M., Le Contel, O., Nagai, T., Nakamura, T., Panov, E., Russell, C., Sergeev, V., and Torbert, R.: MMS-Cluster conjugate observation of disturbance in the current sheet associated with localized fast flow in the near-Earth magnetotail, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-3254, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-3254, 2020.