Weijie Sun, Drew L Turner, Qile Zhang, Shan Wang, Jan Egedal, Trevor Leonard, James A Slavin, Qiang Hu, Ian J Cohen, Kevin Genestreti, Gangkai Poh, Daniel J Gershman, Andrew Smith, Guan Le, Rumi Nakamura, Barbara L Giles, Robert E Ergun, James L Burch
The properties and acceleration mechanisms of electrons (<200 keV) associated with a pair of tailward traveling flux ropes and accompanied reconnection X-lines in Earth's plasma sheet are investigated with MMS measurements. Energetic electrons are enhanced on both boundaries and core of the flux ropes. The power-law spectra of energetic electrons near the X-lines and in flux ropes are harder than those on flux rope boundaries. Theoretical calculations show that the highest energy of adiabatic electrons is a few keV around the X-lines, tens of keV immediately downstream of the X-lines, hundreds of keV on the flux rope boundaries, and a few MeV in the flux rope cores...
December 2022: Journal of Geophysical Research. Space Physics