Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

Published in

American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 1(796), p. 21, 2014

DOI: 10.1088/0004-637x/796/1/21

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Statistical Study of Reconnection Exhausts in the Solar Wind

Journal article published in 2014 by J. Enžl, L. Přech ORCID, J. Šafránková ORCID, Z. Němeček ORCID
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Red circle
Preprint: archiving forbidden
Red circle
Postprint: archiving forbidden
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental process that changes magnetic field configuration and converts a magnetic energy to flow energy and plasma heating. This paper presents a survey of the plasma and magnetic field parameters inside 418 reconnection exhausts identified in the WIND data from 1995-2012. The statistical analysis is oriented on the re-distribution of the magnetic energy released due to reconnection between a plasma acceleration and its heating. The results show that both the portion of the energy deposited into heat as well as the energy spent on the acceleration of the exhaust plasma rise with the magnetic shear angle in accord with the increase of the magnetic flux available for reconnection. The decrease of the normalized exhaust speed with the increasing magnetic shear suggests a decreasing efficiency of the acceleration and/or the increasing efficiency of heating in high-shear events. However, we have found that the already suggested relation between the exhaust speed and temperature enhancement would be rather considered as an upper limit of the plasma heating during reconnection regardless of the shear angle.