Technique for diagnosing the flapping motion of magnetotail current sheets based on single-point magnetic field analysis

Abstract

The magnetotail current sheet is active and often flaps back and forth. Knowledge about the flapping motion of current sheet is essential to explore the related magnetotail dynamic processes, e.g., plasma instabilities. Due to the inability of single-point measurements to separate the spatial-temporal variation of magnetic field, the moving velocity of flapping current sheets cannot be revealed generally until the multipoint measurements are available, e.g., the Cluster mission. Therefore, currently, the flapping behaviors are hard to be resolved only relying on single-point magnetic field analysis. In this study, with minimum variance analysis, we develop a technique based on single-point magnetic field measurement to qualitatively diagnose the flapping properties including the flapping type and the traveling direction of kink-like flapping. The comparison with Cluster multipoint analysis via several case studies demonstrates that this technique is applicable; it should, however, be used with caution especially when the local sheet surface is either quasi-horizontal, or quasi-vertical. This technique will be useful for the planetary magnetotail exploration where no multipoint observations are available. Key Points Technique is developed based on minimum variance analysis It is able to diagnose flapping type and propagation of kink-like flapping It might be invalid when the sheet surface is nearly horizontal or vertical