HR: 0800h
AN: SM31B-0413    [Abstracts]
TI: Wind and ACE Detections of Extended Reconnection X-lines in Solar Wind Current Sheets
AU: * Davis, M S
EM: mattd@ssl.berkeley.edu
AF: UC Berkeley, Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 United States
AU: Phan, T D
EM: phan@ssl.berkeley.edu
AF: UC Berkeley, Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 United States
AU: Gosling, J T
EM: jack.gosling@lasp.colorado.edu
AF: LASP, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80303 United States
AU: Skoug, R M
EM: rskoug@lanl.gov
AF: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, MS D466, Los Alamos, NM 87545 United States
AB: We are currently conducting a survey of 7 years of Wind and ACE data when both spacecraft were in the solar wind. We search for reconnection flow signatures embedded in solar wind current sheets. These large-scale current sheets are ideal for the studies of the large-scale properties of reconnection. Presently, we have completed 30% of our survey and have identified 27 events when both Wind and ACE were in the solar wind and detected essentially the same reconnection signatures, irrespective of how far apart the two spacecraft were. In 5 of these cases, we have evidence for an X-line extending more than 100 Earth radii. We are aware of no counter examples where one spacecraft detected the reconnection signature and the other did not. The large number of dual-spacecraft detections of reconnection flow with no counterexamples strongly indicates that reconnection is fundamentally large scale, not patchy.
DE: 2723 Magnetic reconnection (7526, 7835)
DE: 7845 Particle acceleration
DE: 7846 Plasma energization
SC: SPA-Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005