The “Magnetic-less” Magnetotail Boundary
Mike Liemohn, Editor-in-Chief, JGR: Space Physics
First Published:
3 January 2018
Editors' Highlight—
Most boundaries in space are governed by magnetic fields, but not far behind the Earth, where the field change across the magnetopause plays very little role in the pressure balance relationship.
Space physicists like to focus on regional boundaries that are magnetized. Artemyev et al. [2017] examine a boundary where magnetic fields play only a marginal role: the far-downtail magnetopause. At distances from 50 to 200 RE downtail, they find that the pressure balance is dominated by the plasma on each side of the boundary, not the magnetic field change across the boundary. This is completely different from the dayside magnetopause, which is dominated by a magnetic field discontinuity. They find that the total energies of the ion populations inside and outside the boundary are similar, suggesting thermalization is sufficient to convert streaming magnetosheath ions into hot, rarified magnetotail ions inside the boundary....more
