HR: 1340h
AN: SM23B-0415    [Abstracts]
TI: Thin Current Sheets and Plasma Bubbles
AU: * Sitnov, M I
EM: sitnov@umd.edu
AF: Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, University of Maryland, Energy Research Facility (Bldg. #223), Paint Branch Drive, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-3511 United States
AU: Guzdar, P N
SM23B-0415 AF: Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, University of Maryland, Energy Research Facility (Bldg. #223), Paint Branch Drive, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-3511 United States
AU: Swisdak, M M
EM: marc.swisdak@nrl.navy.mil
AF: Icarus Research Inc., P.O. Box 30780, Bethesda, MD 20824-0780 United States
AB: The concept of plasma bubbles, that is underpopulated flux tubes, which may move toward the Earth much faster than the rest of the tail plasmas because of buoyancy effect, has been proposed by Pontius and Wolf [1990] to resolve the convection crisis problem and explain bursty transfer of magnetic flux and plasma in the tail. However, formation and properties of plasma bubbles remain insufficiently understood. The theory of forced magnetic reconnection combined with the stability analysis of the tail plasmas provides a model of the bubble origin as a result of the formation of a small plasmoid on the closed field lines in the magnetotail and its quick tailward retreat. It is shown that the flux tube that contained a plasmoid becomes a plasma bubble, with the plasmoid being replaced by a thin current sheet embedded within the original thicker sheet. Along the Sun-Earth direction this embedded current sheet is additionally sandwiched between two bifurcated current sheets. The new bubble formation theory is combined with the kinetic models of embedded and bifurcated current sheets. We report on the first results of such a combined kinetic theory of plasma bubbles and provide its detailed comparison with Geotail and Cluster observations.
DE: 2723 Magnetic reconnection (7526, 7835)
DE: 2744 Magnetotail
DE: 2760 Plasma convection (2463)
SC: SPA-Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005