Speaker
Paul Cassak
(West Virginia University)
Description
Magnetic reconnection at the dayside magnetopause is a crucial facet
of solar
wind-magnetospheric coupling, as it drives magnetospheric convection
and is necessary
for magnetic energy storage in the magnetotail. Many fundamental
questions about
dayside reconnection remain insufficiently answered quantitatively and
even
qualitatively, such as the location and local efficiency of reconnection
for
arbitrary solar wind conditions. The situation is complicated compared
to simple
two-dimensional models because the dayside naturally is usually
asymmetric, has
significant flow shear due to the solar wind (especially when the
interplanetary
magnetic field has a northward component), and manifestly has a
three-dimensional
structure. This talk will summarize recent work on a number of aspects
of dayside
reconnection, including the properties of asymmetric reconnection with
a flow shear,
the efficiency of dayside reconnection, and the local properties of
reconnection at
the dayside. Theoretical predictions for each of these will be compared
to
two-dimensional local numerical simulations of reconnection and
naturally occurring
reconnection in self-consistent three-dimensional global
magnetospheric
magnetohydrodynamic simulations.
Primary author
Paul Cassak
(West Virginia University)
Co-authors
Christopher Doss
(West Virginia University)
Colin Komar
(West Virginia University)
Raymond Fermo
(University of Alabama, Huntsville)
