The Magnetospheric Sash and the Cross‐Tail S

Abstract

As revealed in MHD simulation, the magnetospheric sash is a band of weak magnetic field that, for the usual case in which the IMF is approximately perpendicular to the geomagnetic dipole, runs tailward along the high‐latitude magnetopause flanks from one dayside cusp to the other, closing via the cross‐tail neutral sheet. On the magnetopause flanks, it contains the magnetic separator line, at which all three topological types of field lines meet. Seen in a cross‐sectional plane through the near‐Earth tail, the magnetospheric sash takes the form of the cross‐tail S, a weak‐field feature comprised of the tail neutral sheet with diagonally symmetric extensions along the magnetopause flanks connecting it to the separator line. The cross‐tail S is evident in the MHD results and in cross‐sectional maps based on IMP 8 data. The magnetopause expression of the sash is latent in prior works that described the geometry of antiparallel fields across the magnetopause and the consequent cancellation of the fields within the magnetopause layer. The sash picture bears a strong resemblance to antiparallel merging geometry.