第二十六期：Intense Electron-scale Current Sheets transiently forming in the turbulent Plasma Sheet of the Earth’s magnetotail

讲座题目：Intense Electron-scale Current Sheets transiently forming in the turbulent Plasma Sheet of the Earth’s magnetotail

讲座嘉宾：E.E. Grigorenko（Space Research Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia）

时间：2024年10月10日下午4点

地点：北航沙河主楼D座10层东

讲座摘要

Current Sheets (CSs) are key regions of magnetic energy conversion in space plasma. The unique property of CSs is the ability to accumulate magnetic energy and then very quickly, sometimes explosively release it. The process of energy accumulation is accompanied by the CS thinning and stretching, that finally results in the CS disruption and magnetic reconnection. Peculiarities of these processes are controlled by the self-consistent dynamics of particles and fields. Previous multipoint Cluster and THEMIS spacecraft missions revealed the existence of thin CSs with a thickness of the order of gyroradius of thermal protons. In such thin CSs the main current is carried by demagnetized protons. However, the electron physics of the CSs was beyond these studies because of insufficient temporal and spatial resolution of observations. The modern Magnetospecric MultuSale mission for the first time provides the observations of intense electric current structures at the scales of the order of a few electron gyroradii or even less. In such thin Electron-scale Current Sheets (ECSs) electrons become demagnetized and experience the dynamics like that observed in the electron diffusion region of reconnection. In this talk we discuss the mechanisms of formation and properties of the ECSs transiently appearing in the plasma sheet of the Earth’s magnetotail during the propagation of high-speed bulk flows.

嘉宾介绍

Dr. Elena Grigorenko graduated from Moscow State University in 1995 in the Department of Space Physics. She received a Ph.D. degree in Space Plasma Physics in 1998 and a Doctor of Science degree in 2010. From 2000 to the present time, she has worked as researcher, senior researcher and leading researcher in Spece Research Institute of Russian Academy of Science in Moscow, Russia. She was working as a visiting scientist in IRAP (Toulouse, France), in University of Tokyo (Japan) and in Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (Göttingen, Germany). From 2019 to the present time, she also has a part time position as a professor in the Department of Space Physics in Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MPTI) where she holds lectures on space plasma physics. Her research interests include plasma kinetic in thin current sheets in the terrestrial and planetary magnetotails, plasma particle acceleration and wave-particle interactions.