Observations of a small interplanetary magnetic flux rope associated with a magnetic reconnection exhaust

Abstract

A small interplanetary magnetic flux rope prior to an X-line magnetic reconnection exhaust was observed on 1998 March 25 at 1 AU. The X-line magnetic reconnection exhaust has been identified and reported by Gosling etal. The duration of this small magnetic flux rope is about 2 hr. We fitted the constant alpha force-free model to the observed magnetic fields. The model fitting results show that the spacecraft crosses the magnetic flux rope well away from the axis, with d 0/R 0 being 0.76. The fitting results also show that its magnetic configuration is a right-handed helical flux rope, that the estimated field intensity at the axis is 16.3 nT, and that its diameter is 0.0190 AU. In addition, the axial direction of this rope is (θ = 6°, φ = 214°), namely, this magnetic flux rope is lying nearly in the ecliptic plane. According to the geometric relation of the small flux rope and the reconnection exhaust, it is very possible that the small magnetic flux rope has a larger scale initially and comes from the corona; its magnetic fields are peeled off when moving from the Sun to the Earth and at last it reaches a small scale. Though magnetic reconnection can produce a flux-rope topology, in this case the X-line magnetic reconnection is destroying rather than generating the small magnetic flux rope. © 2009. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.