Pan, Dong-Xiao and Yao, Zhong-Hua and Guo, Rui-Long and Arridge, Christopher S. and Ray, Licia C. and Zhao, Yong and Clark, George and Rae, I. Jonathan and Lui, Anthony T. Y. and Zhang, Bin-Zheng and Wei, Yong and Zhou, Xu-Zhi and Fu, Hui-Shan and Connerney, John E. P. and Bolton, Scott J. (2024) The Colocation of Magnetic Reconnection and Current Disruption in Jovian Middle Magnetosphere. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 969 (2): L35. ISSN 2041-8205
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Magnetic reconnection and current disruption are two key processes in driving energy conversion and dissipation in planetary magnetospheres. At the Earth, the two processes usually occur at different locations: the current disruption process occurs more frequently in the near-Earth magnetotail ∼10 R E, while the magnetotail reconnection process is expected to take place in the more distant region where the current sheet is thinner. Occasionally, under very intense solar wind perturbations, reconnection could be located closer to the Earth where current disruption processes usually operate. But it is unclear what the situation is at giant planets, in which the plasma environment is very different from the Earth. In this study, we investigate a middle-Jupiter reconnection event at ∼43 R J. During the event, the inferred integrated cross-field currents were substantially reduced, which we argue is a signature of current disruption. In this case, we suggest that magnetic reconnection could be colocated with a current disruption process in the Jovian magnetosphere, which is roughly analogous to the situation in the extremely perturbed Earth’s magnetosphere.