Advanced Methods for Analyzing in-Situ Observations of Magnetic Reconnection.
Hiroshi HasegawaM R ArgallN AunaiR BandyopadhyayN BesshoI J CohenR E DentonJ C DorelliJ EgedalS A FuselierP GarnierV GénotDaniel B GrahamK J HwangYuri V KhotyaintsevD B KorovinskiyB LavraudQ LenouvelT C LiY-H LiuB Michotte de WelleT K M NakamuraD S PayneS M PetrinecY QiA C RagerP H ReiffJ M SchroederJ R ShusterM I SitnovG K StephensM SwisdakA M TianR B TorbertK J TrattnerS ZenitaniPublished in: Space science reviews (2024)
There is ample evidence for magnetic reconnection in the solar system, but it is a nontrivial task to visualize, to determine the proper approaches and frames to study, and in turn to elucidate the physical processes at work in reconnection regions from in-situ measurements of plasma particles and electromagnetic fields. Here an overview is given of a variety of single- and multi-spacecraft data analysis techniques that are key to revealing the context of in-situ observations of magnetic reconnection in space and for detecting and analyzing the diffusion regions where ions and/or electrons are demagnetized. We focus on recent advances in the era of the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, which has made electron-scale, multi-point measurements of magnetic reconnection in and around Earth's magnetosphere.