HR: 0800h
AN: SM51C-0387    [Abstracts]
TI: Intermittent Reconnection, Flux Ropes and Vortices Generation at the Dayside Magnetopause
AU: * Kuznetsova, M M
EM: masha@elbrus.gsfc.nasa.gov
AF: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 696, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AU: Hesse, M
EM: hesse@gsfc.nasa.gov
AF: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 696, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AU: Rastaetter, L
EM: lr@waipio.gsfc.nasa.gov
AF: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 696, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AU: Gombosi, T I
EM: tamas@umich.edu
AF: University of Michigan, 1517 Space Research Bld., Ann Arbor, MI 48109 United States
AB: In the presence of a nonzero IMF $B_y$ component and of southward IMF $B_z$, magnetic neutral points are formed near the flanks of the magnetosphere. The relative role of almost anti-parallel merging near neutral points vs. component reconnection at the subsolar stagnation point is a matter of ongoing discussions. To address this problem we employ global MHD model BATSRUS with adaptive mesh refinement. We perform simulations of magnetopause dynamics after IMF turning from an initial northward orientation to IMF clock angles $90 < \theta < 180$. An analysis of the reconnected magnetic flux budget showed that reconnection occurs along the extended area at magnetopause surface. We found that magnetopause surface become unstable and demonstrated formation of pressure bubbles, flux ropes (FTEs), and traveling density depletion regions. Vortices generation in the vicinity on magnetic neutral points at the flanks is also demonstrated. We discuss how these results depend on grid resolution.
DE: 7835 Magnetic reconnection
DE: 2724 Magnetopause, cusp, and boundary layers
DE: 2731 Magnetosphere--outer
DE: 2740 Magnetospheric configuration and dynamics
DE: 2784 Solar wind/magnetosphere interactions
SC: SPA-Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting