Speaker
Dr
Laila Andersson
(LASP)
Description
How plasma stored in the Magnetotail is returned back to Earth has great implication of the Earth
magnetosphere responds to changes in the solar wind. In the magnetotail both oxygen and protons
are impacted by fast tail changes such as magnetic reconnection and cross tail oscillations. The
Cluster mission observations of the magnetotail flows shows that at low speeds protons and oxygen
is moving together but at large speeds is not. This has great implications for return flow of plasma
to the inner magnetosphere. Using simulations with an implicit kinetic code investigation of how fast
cross tail oscillations and reconnection can decouple oxygen from the plasma sheet is presented
here. This Cluster-simulation study will greatly help us interpret the observation from MMS mission,
a mission where the satellites are close and large scale structures such as cross tail oscillations is
more difficult to resolve.
Primary author
Dr
Laila Andersson
(LASP)
