Abstract.A study of dipolarization fronts of the Earth's magnetotail has been performed using seven years (2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007) of Cluster data. Events both with and without highspeed earthward flows are included. A superposed epoch analysis of the data shows that the dipolarization is preceeded by a decrease of B z before the increase. The duration of the dipolarization tends to be decreasing with increasing velocity of the plasma flows. The thickness of the dipolarization front is on average 1.8 plasma inertial lengths, independent of the plasma velocity. We find that the events fall into two categories: Earthward and tailward moving dipolarizations. The dipolarization fronts can be assumed to be tangential discontinuities and the currents on the front have mainly a perpendicular component.

The magnetosheath flow may take the form of large amplitude, yet spatially localized, transient increases in dynamic pressure, known as "magnetosheath jets" or "plasmoids" among other denominations. Here, we describe the present state of knowledge with respect to such jets, which are a very common phenomenon downstream of the quasi-parallel bow shock. We discuss their properties as determined by satellite observations (based on both case and statistical studies), their occurrence, their relation to solar wind and foreshock conditions, and their interaction with and impact on the magnetosphere. As carriers of plasma and corresponding momentum, energy, and magnetic flux, jets bear some similarities to bursty bulk flows, which they are compared to. Based on our knowledge of jets in the near Earth environment, we discuss the expectations for jets occurring in other planetary and

Understanding the interplay between many-body phenomena and non-equilibrium in systems with entangled spin and orbital degrees of freedom is a central objective in nano-electronics. We demonstrate that the combination of Coulomb interaction, spin-orbit coupling and valley mixing results in a particular selection of the inelastic virtual processes contributing to the Kondo resonance in carbon nanotubes at low temperatures. This effect is dictated by conjugation properties of the underlying carbon nanotube spectrum at zero and finite magnetic field. Our measurements on a clean carbon nanotube are complemented by calculations based on a new approach to the nonequilibrium Kondo problem which well reproduces the rich experimental observations in Kondo transport.