AGS-PRF: Study of Dayside Reconnection Through Cusp Ion Structures

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This is an Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences (AGS) Post-doctoral Research Fellowship grant to support a young woman scientist just beginning her scientific career.The project addresses a longstanding question in magnetospheric physics about where magnetic reconnection occurs on the dayside magnetopause. In particular it will address the question of the relative importance of antiparallel reconnection which is thought to occur when the magnetosheath magnetic field and the magnetospheric magnetic field are oppositely directed and component reconnection in which one component of the two fields is oppositely directed. Cusp magnetic field lines map the magnetopause. Information about dayside magnetic reconnection is contained in particle signatures in the cusp region. The approach is to run a global magnetohydrodynamic simulation of the solar wind, magnetosphere and ionosphere system and then to launch ions into the fields from the simulation. The distribution of test ions in the cusp region will be used to model cusp ion spectrograms as a function of the location and nature of the reconnection. The simulations will vary solar wind conditions including the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) clock angle, the radial component of the IMF and the solar wind pressure. The theoretical spectrograms will be compared with Cluster spacecraft observations. This study will contribute to an understanding of relationship between the cusp ion signatures and dayside reconnection.