Dipole tilt angle effect on magnetic reconnection locations on the magnetopause

Plasma energy dispersion properties inside reconnection jet flows observed inside the low‐latitude boundary layer are used to determine the distances of observing satellites to reconnection sites. The locations of the reconnection sites are then retrieved by tracing the modeled field lines by those distances. The controlling effects of the dipole tilt angle to the location of X lines or reconnection sites are investigated. Our results show that the Earth's dipole tilt angles strongly modify the location of X lines predicted by Cooling et al's model, which is thought to be the result of magnetopause reshaping due to finite dipole tilt angles.

[1]  J. Dungey.  Interplanetary Magnetic Field and the Auroral Zones , 1961 .

[2]  B. Sonnerup,et al.  Magnetopause reconnection rate , 1974 .

[3]  F. Mozer,et al.  A quantitative model for the potential resulting from reconnection with an arbitrary interplanetary magnetic field , 1974 .

[4]  Nancy U. Crooker,et al.  Dayside merging and cusp geometry , 1979 .

[5]  I. Papamastorakis,et al.  Plasma acceleration at the Earth's magnetopause: evidence for reconnection , 1979, Nature.

[6]  I. Papamastorakis,et al.  Evidence for magnetic field reconnection at the Earth's magnetopause , 1981 .

[7]  C. Russell,et al.  Evidence for quasi-stationary reconnection at the dayside magnetopause , 1982 .

[8]  G. Haerendel,et al.  Energetic ion composition in the subsolar magnetopause and boundary layer , 1982 .

[9]  C. Russell,et al.  Patterns of potential magnetic field merging sites on the dayside magnetopause , 1984 .

[10]  R. Lundin.  On the magnetospheric boundary layer and solar wind energy transfer into the magnetosphere , 1988 .

[11]  Comment on “A tangent subsolar merging line” by N. U. Crooker et al. , 1991 .

[12]  Nikolai A. Tsyganenko,et al.  Modeling the Earth's magnetospheric magnetic field confined within a realistic magnetopause , 1995 .

[13]  Solar wind control of ultralow‐frequency wave activity at L = 3 , 1998 .

[14]  R. Elphic,et al.  Composition measurements in the dusk flank magnetosphere , 1999 .

[15]  S. A. Boardsen,et al.  An empirical model of the high‐latitude magnetopause , 2000 .

[16]  S. Petrinec,et al.  Stability of the high‐latitude reconnection site for steady northward IMF , 2000 .

[17]  C. J. Owen,et al.  Role of the magnetosheath flow in determining the motion of open flux tubes , 2001 .

[18]  I. Papamastorakis,et al.  First multispacecraft ion measurements in and near the Earth's magnetosphere with the identical Cluster ion spectrometry (CIS) experiment , 2001 .

[19]  M. W. Dunlop,et al.  The Cluster Magnetic Field Investigation: overview of in-flight performance and initial results , 2001 .

[20]  M. Fok,et al.  The dayside reconnection X line , 2002 .

[21]  C. Russell,et al.  Possible dipole tilt dependence of dayside magnetopause reconnection , 2003 .

[22]  S. Petrinec,et al.  Location of the reconnection line for northward interplanetary magnetic field , 2004 .

[23]  C. Owen,et al.  Computing the reconnection rate at the Earth's magnetopause using two spacecraft observations , 2004 .

[24]  R. Walker,et al.  On the importance of antiparallel reconnection when the dipole tilt and IMF By are nonzero , 2006 .

[25]  M. Dunlop,et al.  Global view of dayside magnetic reconnection with the dusk‐dawn IMF orientation: A statistical study for Double Star and Cluster data , 2007 .

[26]  S. Petrinec,et al.  Location of the reconnection line at the magnetopause during southward IMF conditions , 2007 .

[27]  Werner Magnes,et al.  The THEMIS Fluxgate Magnetometer , 2008 .

[28]  R. Abiad,et al.  The THEMIS ESA Plasma Instrument and In-flight Calibration , 2008 .

[29]  Xiaoye Zhang,et al.  A three-dimensional asymmetric magnetopause model , 2010 .

[30]  S. Petrinec,et al.  Antiparallel and component reconnection at the dayside magnetopause , 2011 .

[31]  Z.-Q. Liu,et al.  Dipole tilt control of the magnetopause for southward IMF from global magnetohydrodynamic simulations , 2012 .

[32]  J. Lu,et al.  The IMF dependence of the magnetopause from global MHD simulations , 2013 .

[33]  S. Hoilijoki,et al.  Magnetopause reconnection and energy conversion as influenced by the dipole tilt and the IMF Bx , 2014 .