HR: 10:42h
AN: SM22A-02 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: The Near-Earth Neutral Line Model: Advanced Insights From Simulations
AU: * Birn, J
EM: jbirn@lanl.gov
AF: Los Alamos National Laboratory, MS D466, Los Alamos, NM 87545, United States
AU: Hesse, M
EM: michael.hesse@nasa.gov
AF: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 674, Greenbelt, MD 20771, United States
AB: A major attraction of the early neutral line model of substorms was that one mechanism, namely magnetic reconnection caused by the local breakdown of ideal MHD, seemed to provide an explanation for various aspects of substorms: fast flows, plasmoid severance, current disruption and deviation, and the acceleration of energetic particles. However, extensive observations in the near and mid tail then cast doubt on this relationship, because particularly the signs of current disruption and the acceleration of energetic particles appeared to happen in the transition region between dipole and tail, clearly earthward from the inferred average reconnection site. Here we review insights, obtained from simulations of plasma and particle dynamics in the tail, about the relationship between reconnection, the current redistribution in the substorm current wedge, and particle acceleration. We also dicuss further insights into the role of entropy loss in the earthward transport and a possible coupling between small-scale structures and auroral arcs.
DE: 2407 Auroral ionosphere (2704)
DE: 2723 Magnetic reconnection (7526, 7835)
DE: 2740 Magnetospheric configuration and dynamics
DE: 2744 Magnetotail
DE: 2790 Substorms
SC: SPA-Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: 2007 Joint Assembly