Magnetic reconnection in the heliosphere: new insights from observations in the solar wind

Abstract

AbstractMagnetic reconnection plays a central role in the interpretation of a wide variety of observed solar, space, astrophysical, and laboratory plasma phenomena. The relatively recent discovery that reconnection is common at thin current sheets in the solar wind opens up a new laboratory for studying this fundamental plasma process and its after-effects. Here we provide a brief overview of some of the new insights on reconnection derived from observations of reconnection exhaust jets in the solar wind.