In situ detection of collisionless reconnection in the Earth's magnetotail

Magnetic reconnection is the process by which magnetic field lines of opposite polarity reconfigure to a lower-energy state, with the release of magnetic energy to the surroundings. Reconnection at the Earth's dayside magnetopause and in the magnetotail allows the solar wind into the magnetosphere. It begins in a small ‘diffusion region’, where a kink in the newly reconnected lines produces jets of plasma away from the region. Although plasma jets from reconnection have previously been reported, the physical processes that underlie jet formation have remained poorly understood because of the scarcity of in situ observations of the minuscule diffusion region. Theoretically, both resistive and collisionless processes can initiate reconnection, but which process dominates in the magnetosphere is still debated. Here we report the serendipitous encounter of the Wind spacecraft with an active reconnection diffusion region, in which are detected key processes predicted by models of collisionless reconnection. The data therefore demonstrate that collisionless reconnection occurs in the magnetotail.