Yonghui Ma

The force‐free configuration of flux ropes in geomagnetotail: Cluster observations

Unambiguous knowledge of magnetic field structure and the electric current distribution is critical for understanding the origin, evolution, and related dynamic properties of magnetic flux ropes (MFRs). In this paper, a survey of 13 MFRs in the Earths magnetotail are conducted by Cluster multipoint analysis, so that their force-free feature, i.e., the kind of magnetic field structure satisfying J x B = 0, can be probed directly. It is showed that the selected flux ropes with the bipolar signature of the south-north magnetic field component generally lie near the equatorial plane, as expected, and that the magnetic field gradient is rather weak near the axis center, where the curvature radius is large. The current density (up to several tens of nA/m(2)) reaches their maximum values as the center is approached. It is found that the stronger the current density, the smaller the angles between the magnetic field and current in MFRs. The direct observations show that only quasi force-free structure is observed, and it tends to appear in the low plasma beta regime (in agreement with the theoretic results). The quasi force-free region is generally found to be embedded in the central portion of the MFRs, where the current is approximately field aligned and proportional to the strength of core field. It is shown that similar to 60% of surveyed MFRs can be globally approximated as force free. The force-free factor a is found to be nonconstantly varied through the quasi force-free MFR, suggesting that the force-free structure is nonlinear.

EVIDENCE FOR NEWLY INITIATED RECONNECTION IN THE SOLAR WIND AT 1 AU

We report the first evidence for a large-scale reconnection exhaust newly initiated in the solar wind using observations from three spacecraft: ACE, Wind, and ARTEMIS P2. We identified a well-structured X-line exhaust using measurements from ARTEMIS P2 in the downstream solar wind. However, in the upstream solar wind, ACE detected the same current sheet that corresponds to the exhaust identified by ARTEMIS P2 data without showing any reconnection signals. We cannot find any reconnection signals from Wind located between ACE and ARTEMIS P2. Within the exhaust, a magnetic island is identified, which is not consistent with the quasi-steady feature as previously reported and provides further evidence that the reconnection is newly initiated. Our observations show that the entering of energetic particles, probably from Earths bow shock, makes the crucial difference between the non-reconnecting current sheet and the exhaust. Since no obvious driving factors are responsible for the reconnection initiation, we infer that these energetic particles probably play an important role in the reconnection initiation. Theoretical analysis also shows support for this potential mechanism.

Direct evidence for kinetic effects associated with solar wind reconnection

Kinetic effects resulting from the two-fluid physics play a crucial role in the fast collisionless reconnection, which is a process to explosively release massive energy stored in magnetic fields in space and astrophysical plasmas. In-situ observations in the Earths magnetosphere provide solid consistence with theoretical models on the point that kinetic effects are required in the collisionless reconnection. However, all the observations associated with solar wind reconnection have been analyzed in the context of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) although a lot of solar wind reconnection exhausts have been reported. Because of the absence of kinetic effects and substantial heating, whether the reconnections are still ongoing when they are detected in the solar wind remains unknown. Here, by dual-spacecraft observations, we report a solar wind reconnection with clear Hall magnetic fields. Its corresponding Alfvenic electron outflow jet, derived from the decouple between ions and electrons, is identified, showing direct evidence for kinetic effects that dominate the collisionless reconnection. The turbulence associated with the exhaust is a kind of background solar wind turbulence, implying that the reconnection generated turbulence has not much developed.

Global magnetohydrodynamic simulations on multiple GPUs

Abstract Global magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) models play the major role in investigating the solar wind–magnetosphere interaction. However, the huge computation requirement in global MHD simulations is also the main problem that needs to be solved. With the recent development of modern graphics processing units (GPUs) and the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA), it is possible to perform global MHD simulations in a more efficient manner. In this paper, we present a global magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulator on multiple GPUs using CUDA 4.0 with GPUDirect 2.0. Our implementation is based on the modified leapfrog scheme, which is a combination of the leapfrog scheme and the two-step Lax–Wendroff scheme. GPUDirect 2.0 is used in our implementation to drive multiple GPUs. All data transferring and kernel processing are managed with CUDA 4.0 API instead of using MPI or OpenMP. Performance measurements are made on a multi-GPU system with eight NVIDIA Tesla M2050 (Fermi architecture) graphics cards. These measurements show that our multi-GPU implementation achieves a peak performance of 97.36 GFLOPS in double precision.

Observations of current sheets associated with solar wind reconnection exhausts passing through the near lunar wake

Two reconnection exhausts were detected by one of the dual ARTEMIS orbiters in the solar wind near the Moon. Almost meanwhile, the other ARTEMIS orbiter encountered the two corresponding current sheets at the relatively marginal and central locations in the near lunar wake. Due to the Moons direct absorption, the current density of the current sheet disappears within the wake. As a result, the wake magnetic field around the current sheets is changed. It is found that the variations of the magnetic field in the wake are primarily governed by two factors: diamagnetic current system at the wake boundary and the dropout of M direction currents (jM) within the wake. Instead of being almost unaltered as commonly assumed in the study of lunar wake, the magnetic field of the current sheets becomes potential with almost zero current density. With respect to the solar wind magnetic field, this potential magnetic field is weaker in the center and has an X line-like configuration with significant normal components in the marginal portions of the wake. Our result may be applicable to nonconducting or weakly conducting contexts widely existing in the universe.

Anomalously high rate refilling in the near lunar wake caused by the Earth's bow shock

On July 28 2012, the Earths bow shock crossed the lunar wake and was detected by the two ARTEMIS lunar orbiters in the solar wind and lunar wake, respectively. The bow shock and the Moon as well as the lunar wake have a very complicated interaction leading to some results that are very different from the ordinary bow shock and lunar wake. Our findings in this study include three main aspects. First, the bow shock has been deformed and thus collapsed as previously reported in the lunar wake. Second, ions and electrons with a density of up to 6.8 cm−3 refill in the near wake (< 1 lunar radius from the lunar surface). The refilling electrons consist of two portions: drifting electrons and parallelly advecting electrons, while the refilling ions are all field-aligned. Third, a current bifurcation within the shock ramp in the solar wind has been strengthened in relatively central part of the near wake. Our analysis strongly suggests that the bow shock has already been collapsed before it enters into the lunar wake caused by the interaction with the diamagnetic current system. Electrons with large pitch angles can be trapped in the strengthened bifurcation and taken into the near wake. However, both low energy electrons and ions can easily enter into the near wake, which is very different from ordinary lunar wake pattern. We infer that the drifting and trapped electrons may have played an important role in this event.