Magnetic reconnection at the leading edge of an interplanetary coronal mass ejection : a data-driven simulation study

Abstract

Magnetic Reconnection is a magnetic field rearrangement in a microscopic scale to make the system achieve a lower energy state through transferring the energy that is stored in the magnetic field into kinetic energy and heat of the plasma. There is some interesting observational evidence of magnetic reconnection in the interplanetary region between the Sun and the Earth's magnetosphere by Chian and Munoz (2011 ). On 2005 January 21, four Cluster spacecraft detected reconnection at the leading edge of an interplanetary coronal mass ejection (ICME). For this event their work shows characteristics of asymmetric reconnection, which is a type of reconnection with a current sheet separating plasma of different magnetic field strength and density. In this project we study asymmetric reconnection in the same event as Chian and Munoz (2011 ). We performed a data-driven simulation using a particle-in-cell (PI C) model, which treats both ions and electrons as particles. We compared the results with observational data. Finally, we found flow crossover between two plasma populations that were initially separated.