HR: 0830h
AN: SH31A-1083    [PDF]
TI: Kink-mode Waves and Bifurcated Current Sheets: CLUSTER Observations and Analysis Techniques
AU: * Cully, C
EM: cully@colorado.edu
AF: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4 Canada
AU: * Cully, C
EM: cully@colorado.edu
AF: LASP, University of Colorado, 1234 Innovation Drive, Boulder, CO 80303-7814 United States
AU: Donovan, E
EM: eric@phys.ucalgary.ca
AF: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4 Canada
AU: Buchert, S
EM: scb@irfu.se
AF: Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Box 537, Uppsala, SE-751 21 Sweden
AU: Lucek, E
EM: e.lucek@imperial.ac.uk
AF: Imperial College London, Prince Consort Road, London, SW7 2BW United Kingdom
AB: Although the magnetic configuration of the tail current sheet in the moments before reconnection is of considerable interest, many fundamental observational questions remain. What does the large-scale structure typically look like? How thick is the sheet? Is it bifurcated? What bulk wavemodes are active, and at what amplitude? Cluster observations, when combined with multipoint analysis techniques, offer the opportunity to observationally resolve some of these questions. We present an analysis technique that we use to first solve for the local normal vector to the current sheet at each data point, and then to identify the presence and wavemode of large-scale bulk wave modes (e.g. kink modes). We then take this motion into account when reconstructing the large-scale structure of the sheet from the measurements. We apply these techniques to Cluster observations of the tail current sheet before a substorm on the 11th of October, 2001. At the Cluster location 19 Re downtail, we find large-amplitude kink-mode waves that are propagating duskward in the minutes before reconnection onset.
DE: 2740 Magnetospheric configuration and dynamics
DE: 2744 Magnetotail
DE: 2764 Plasma sheet
DE: 2794 Instruments and techniques
SC: SPA - Solar and Heliospheric Physics [SH]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting