Ion and electron velocity distributions within flux transfer events

Abstract

The detailed nature of the thermal and suprathermal ion and electron distributions within magnetic flux transfer events (FTEs) is examined. Examples of both magnetosheath FTEs and magnetospheric FTEs are discussed. The detailed distributions confirm that FTEs contain a mixture of magnetosheath and magnetospheric plasmas. To lowest order, the distributions are consistent with a simple superposition of the two interpenetrating populations, with no strong interactions between them. To first order, some interesting differences appear, especially in the electron distributions, suggesting that considerable pitch angle scattering and some electron energy diffusion are also occurring. These observations should provide a useful test of analytical and numerical studies of interpenetrating plasmas.