Magnetic reconnection at the dayside magnetopause: Advances with MMS

Abstract

Magnetic reconnection is known to be an important process for coupling solar wind mass and momentum into the Earth's magnetosphere. Reconnection is initiated in an electron-scale dissipation/diffusion region around an X line, but its consequences are large scale. While past experimental efforts have advanced our understanding of ion-scale physics and the consequences of magnetic reconnection, much higher spatial and temporal resolutions are needed to understand the electron-scale processes that cause reconnection. The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission was implemented to probe the electron scale of reconnection. This article reports on results from the first scan of the dayside magnetopause with MMS. Specifically, we introduce a new event involving the radial traversal of guide-field reconnection to illustrate features of reconnection physics on the electron scale.