FG: Magnetic Reconnection: The Key to Understanding Earth’s Space Environment

Dates: 2025 – 2029
Leaders: Yi Qi, John Dorelli, Katherine Goodrich, Chen Shi, M. Hasan Barbhuiya, Krishna Khanal, Henry Przygocki
Research Area: Primary – GSM

Topic Description

Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental plasma process that enables magnetic field topological rearrangement and explosive energy conversion. In our heliosphere, it plays a vital role in solar flares, coronal mass ejections, coronal heating, solar wind acceleration, and the interaction of the solar wind with planetary magnetospheres. At Earth, magnetic reconnection is the primary pathway by which energy from the solar wind enters Earth’s magnetosphere. At the dayside magnetopause, reconnection creates an open magnetic field topology, providing the solar wind with direct access to the ionosphere through the polar cusps. As plasma flows across the polar cap boundary, magnetic energy builds up in the magnetotail lobes until it is explosively released by reconnection somewhere in the central plasma sheet. Magnetic reconnection also has a complex relationship with turbulence from the fluid to the sub-kinetic scale. The interplay between reconnection and turbulence leads to various effects that are still under investigation.

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