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Observation of Electrostatic Solitary Waves associated with reconnection on the dayside magnetopause boundary
Author(s) -
Matsumoto H.,
Deng X. H.,
Kojima H.,
Anderson R. R.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2002gl016319
Subject(s) - magnetopause , physics , amplitude , magnetic reconnection , geophysics , dissipation , computational physics , diffusion , solar wind , plasma , optics , quantum mechanics , thermodynamics
When a Coronal Mass Ejection struck the Earth on January 10, 1997, Electrostatic Solitary Waves (ESW) and Amplitude Modulated Electrostatic Waves (AMEW) were detected as GEOTAIL skimmed along the dayside magnetopause and observed 3‐dimensional multiple x‐line magnetic reconnection. The ESW had amplitudes up to ∼20mV/m and evolved from two‐dimensional structures with smaller amplitudes to one‐dimensional structures with larger amplitudes. The observation of ESW and AMEW show that the enhanced broadband electrostatic emissions associated with reconnection are not random noises but are nonlinear coherent structures which may provide important dissipation in the electron diffusion region during reconnection.