Smile-shaped electron gradient distributions observed during magnetic reconnection at Earth's magnetopause.

ABSTRACT: The electron diffusion region is central to NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission to understand collisionless magnetic reconnection, the plasma physics phenomenon crucial to triggering the explosive energy release of solar flares, powering auroras generated in planetary magnetospheres, and driving sawtooth crashes in laboratory fusion devices. Inside the diffusion region, electron velocity distributions exhibit highly-structured velocity-space signatures critical for elucidating the kinetic mechanisms fueling reconnection. Recent multi-spacecraft analysis techniques enabled observational study of the spatial gradient in the electron velocity distribution, which has been reported in electron-scale current layers to explain the kinetic origins of electron pressure gradients. However

SUBMITTER: Shuster JR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12900639 | biostudies-literature | 2026

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature