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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Astron. Space Sci.
Sec. Space Physics
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fspas.2024.1481448

Energy Transport Through Earth's Plasma Sheet in 3-D

Provisionally accepted
Krushna Chandra Barik Krushna Chandra Barik *Christopher C Chaston Christopher C Chaston
  • Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    A statistical analysis of energy transport through Earth's plasma sheet is performed using six years of Magnetospheric Multi-Scale (MMS) mission observations. The analysis entails a complete decomposition of the contributions to transport including the ion heat flux and enthalpy flux derived from the full ion pressure tensor to provide a three-dimensional (3-D) picture of plasma sheet energy transport. It is shown that the Poynting flux and enthalpy flux compete to dominate the total energy transport, while the heretofore ignored heat flux generally contributes a larger fraction of the total energy flux than the bulk kinetic energy flux. The spatial distribution of these fluxes are consistent with magnetic reconnection driven transport from an X-line statistically located at X ∼ -20 R E . Kinetic fluxes stream Earthward from this point peaking mid-tail along the neutral sheet, while Poynting fluxes peak at higher latitudes and along the inner edge of the plasma sheet.

    Keywords: energy transport, plasma sheet, Magnetotail, magnetic reconnection, Ion flow

    Received: 15 Aug 2024; Accepted: 29 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Barik and Chaston. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Krushna Chandra Barik, Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, United States

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