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Bifurcated outflow jet in a solar wind reconnection exhaust

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Abstract

We present new observations of the reconnection outflow jet obtained from the crossing of a solar wind reconnection exhaust by the Wind spacecraft on 5 March 2001. The outflow jet is characterized by a bifurcated configuration, which is different from typical reconnection exhausts. The two outflow jets are mainly distributed in the region close to the exhaust boundaries. Between the two jets, the bulging of the magnetic field and the slight depression of the plasma density are observed. The possible mechanism for the bifurcation of the outflow jet has also been investigated by using a magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) simulation of Petschek-type reconnection. The dynamic patterns of the reconnection exhaust are analyzed in detail. We find that the bifurcated jet is one of the transient configurations produced in the magnetic reconnection. Other observed features of the exhaust show similar agreement with the predictions from the simulation. The study of the reconnection exhaust, over multiple spatial scales, provides an insight into the dynamic evolution of solar wind reconnection exhausts.

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Acknowledgements

We thank R. P. Lepping and R. P. Lin and NASA/CDAWeb for providing Wind data used in this paper. This work was jointly supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Grant No. XDB 41000000, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grants 41231068, 41531073, 41204127 and 61872047), and the Specialized Research Fund for State Key Laboratories. The computations were performed by Numerical Forecast Modeling R\(\&\)D and VR System of State Key Laboratory of Space Weather.

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Space Weather, National Space Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Chaoxu Liu & Xueshang Feng

  2. Planetary and Space Physics Group, Department of Astronomy, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Jianpeng Guo

  3. Beijing Key Laboratory of Intelligent Telecommunications Software and Multimedia, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, 100876, China

    Huiyuan Fu

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  1. Chaoxu Liu
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Liu, C., Feng, X., Guo, J. et al. Bifurcated outflow jet in a solar wind reconnection exhaust. Astrophys Space Sci 366, 2 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-020-03910-6

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