Magnetic flux transfer events (FTEs) are signatures of unsteady magnetic reconnection, often observed at planetary magnetopauses. Their generation mechanism, a key ingredient determining how they regulate the transfer of solar wind energy into magnetospheres, is still largely unknown. We report THEMIS spacecraft observations on 2007-06-14 of an FTE generated by multiple X-line reconnection at the dayside magnetopause. The evidence consists of (1) two oppositely-directed ion jets converging toward the FTE that was slowly moving southward, (2) the cross-section of the FTE core being elongated along the magnetopause normal, probably squeezed by the oppositely-directed jets, and (3) bidirectional field-aligned fluxes of energetic electrons in the magnetosheath, indicating reconnection on both sides of the FTE. The observations agree well with a global magnetohydrodynamic model of the FTE generation under large geomagnetic dipole tilt, which implies the efficiency of magnetic flux transport into the magnetotail being lower for larger dipole tilt. © 2010 by the American Geophysical Union.
CITATION STYLE
Hasegawa, H., Wang, J., Dunlop, M. W., Pu, Z. Y., Zhang, Q. H., Lavraud, B., … Bogdanova, Y. V. (2010). Evidence for a flux transfer event generated by multiple X-line reconnection at the magnetopause. Geophysical Research Letters, 37(16). https://doi.org/10.1029/2010GL044219
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