5–9 Oct 2026
INPE
America/Sao_Paulo timezone

Investigation of Kinetic Signatures and Energy Conversion in Anti-parallel Magnetic Reconnection via the MMS Mission

7 Oct 2026, 16:15
15m
IAI (INPE)

IAI

INPE

Oral Solar, Heliospheric and Magnetospheric Physics Oral Presentations | Apresetações Orais

Speaker

Cecilia Sa (INPE)

Description

Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental physical process that converts magnetic energy into plasma energy. It occurs in regions where the restructuring of field line topology and particle acceleration are enabled by the violation of the frozen-in flux condition. This work presents a detailed investigation of the microphysics of this process, focusing on the Electron Diffusion Region (EDR), utilizing high spatial and temporal resolution data from NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission. The central objective is to analyze dayside reconnection events at the Earth's magnetopause under anti-parallel regimes, characterizing kinetic signatures and quantifying energy conversion (J.E’) by calculating the non-ideal terms of the generalized Ohm's law.The methodology is based on the use of Burst mode data collected by the FPI, EDP, and FIELDS instruments across the mission's four spacecraft, which are transformed into the local LMN coordinate system to calculate the non-ideal terms. The investigation employs the energy conversion term J.E’ to measure the effective energy transfer from the field to the plasma. It also presents a comparative statistical approach using Functional Principal Component Analysis (FPCA) among several events selected from the literature to identify global patterns in energy conversion efficiency. The results reveal two main functional components, accounting for 70.8% of the total variability of the events, which are related to the peak of energy conversion and modifications in the temporal width of the energy conversion region, respectively. The model was validated by high coefficients of determination (R² = 0.979 for predicting the conversion peak and R² = 0.808 for the total converted energy). It is concluded that reconnection dynamics depend not only on the magnitude of the converted energy but also on the temporal organization of dissipation during the EDR crossing, demonstrating the effectiveness of functional techniques in the statistical characterization of magnetic reconnection phenomena.

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