HR: 10:20h
AN: SM22B-01 INVITED    [Abstracts]
TI: Observational Evidence for Continuous Versus Intermittent Reconnection at the Magnetopause
AU: * Phan, T D
EM: phan@ssl.berkeley.edu
AF: University of California at Berkeley, 7 Gauss Way, Berkeley, ca 94720, United States
AB: I will address the temporal behavior of magnetic reconnection at the low- and high-latitude magnetopause. Evidences for both continuous and intermittent reconnection at the magnetopause and their ionospheric signatures have been reported in the literature. Repeated detections of reconnection flows by multi-spacecraft during multiple magnetopause crossings, as well as the continuous observations of the proton aurora, have been taken as evidence for continuous reconnection. On the other hand, flux transfer events (FTEs) and their ionospheric signatures have often been interpreted as evidence for intermittent reconnection. One of the key questions is whether reconnection is dominantly continuous or intermittent during steady IMF conditions. I will discuss the possibility that some of the FTE signatures are caused not by intermittent reconnection, but by continuous reconnection with modulated reconnection rates instead.
DE: 2724 Magnetopause and boundary layers
DE: 2784 Solar wind/magnetosphere interactions
DE: 7835 Magnetic reconnection (2723, 7526)
SC: SPA-Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting