Abstract
Abstract We report Magnetospheric Multiscale observations of multiple vertical current sheets (CSs) in a bursty bulk flow in the near-Earth magnetotail. Two of the CSs were fine structures of a dipolarization front (DF) at the leading edge of the flow. The other CSs were a few Earth radii tailward of the DF; that is, in the wake of the DF. Some of these vertical CSs were a few electron inertial lengths thick and were converting energy from magnetic field to plasma. The currents of the CSs in the DF wake were carried by electrons that formed flow shear layers. These electron-scale CSs were probably formed during the turbulent evolution of the bursty bulk flow and are important for energy conversion associated with fast flows.
Highlights
Bursty bulk flows (BBFs) are fast convective plasma flows observed frequently in the central plasma sheet in the terrestrial magnetotail (Baumjohann et al 1990; Angelopoulos et al 1992)
The detailed mechanism responsible for the current sheet (CS) flapping is unclear. Some of these horizontal current sheets (CSs) observed within BBFs were ion-scale CSs, which are favorable for triggering magnetic reconnection (e.g., Nakamura et al 2002)
Similar to the CSs observed at the dipolarization front (DF), these CSs were vertical CSs as their normals mainly pointed in the X direction
Summary
Bursty bulk flows (BBFs) are fast convective plasma flows observed frequently in the central plasma sheet in the terrestrial magnetotail (Baumjohann et al 1990; Angelopoulos et al 1992). The detailed mechanism responsible for the current sheet (CS) flapping is unclear Some of these horizontal CSs observed within BBFs were ion-scale CSs, which are favorable for triggering magnetic reconnection (e.g., Nakamura et al 2002). Dipolarization fronts (DFs), which are usually observed at the leading edge of BBFs, are thin vertical CSs with thickness on the order of the ion inertial length or the ion Larmor radius (Runov et al 2009; Zhou et al 2009; Schmid et al 2011; Fu et al 2012). It provides 3D velocity distributions for both ions and electrons with 4.5 s resolution in the fast survey mode
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