Chinese Science Bulletin

, Volume 59, Issue 34, pp 4797–4803 | Cite as

Observation of directional change of core field inside flux ropes within one reconnection diffusion region in the Earth’s magnetotail

  • Shiyong Huang
  • Ye Pang
  • Zhigang Yuan
  • Xiaohua Deng
  • Jiansen He
  • Meng Zhou
  • Huishan Fu
  • Song Fu
  • Huimin Li
  • Dedong Wang
  • Haimeng Li
Article Geophysics
First Online:
Received:
Accepted:

Abstract

Two consecutive magnetic flux ropes, separated by less than 30 s (Δt < 30 s), are observed within one magnetic reconnection diffusion region without strong guide field in the Earth’s magnetotail by Cluster multi-spacecraft. The flux ropes are characterized by bipolar signatures of the south–north magnetic field component B z accompanied with strong core magnetic field B y , intense current J and density depletions inside of them. In spite of the small but non-trivial global scale negative guide field (–B y ), there exists a directional change of the core fields of two flux ropes, i.e., −B y for the first one, and +B y for the second one. The directions of the core fields are the same as the ambient cross-tail magnetic field component (B y ) just outside of flux ropes. Therefore, we suggest that the core field of flux ropes is formed by compression of the local preexisting B y and that the directional change of core field is due to the change of local preexisting B y . Such a change in ambient B y might be caused by some microscale physics.

Keywords

Flux rope Core field Magnetic reconnection Guide field Magnetotail 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41174140, 41374168, and 41174147), Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (20110141110043), and Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-13-0446), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Funded Project, and the Fundamental Research Fund for the Central Universities (2042014kf0017, 2012212020206, 2012212020204). We thank A. Vaivads, A. Retinò, Y. V. Khotyaintsev, M. André for valuable discussions, and acknowledge Cluster Active Archive for the high-quality data.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Copyright information

© Science China Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  • Shiyong Huang
    • 1
  • Ye Pang
    • 2
  • Zhigang Yuan
    • 1
  • Xiaohua Deng
    • 1
    • 2
  • Jiansen He
    • 3
  • Meng Zhou
    • 2
  • Huishan Fu
    • 4
  • Song Fu
    • 1
  • Huimin Li
    • 1
  • Dedong Wang
    • 1
  • Haimeng Li
    • 1
  1. 1.School of Electronic and InformationWuhan UniversityWuhanChina
  2. 2.Institute of Space Science and TechnologyNanchang UniversityNanchangChina
  3. 3.School of Earth and Space SciencesPeking UniversityBeijingChina
  4. 4.Space Science Institute, School of AstronauticsBeihang UniversityBeijingChina

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