Genesis of Interplanetary Intermittent Turbulence: A Case Study of Rope–rope Magnetic Reconnection

Abstract

In a recent paper, the relation between current sheet, magnetic reconnection, and turbulence at the leading edge of an interplanetary coronal mass ejection was studied. We report here the observation of magnetic reconnection at the interface region of two interplanetary magnetic flux ropes. The front and rear boundary layers of three interplanetary magnetic flux ropes are identified, and the structures of magnetic flux ropes are reconstructed by the Grad–Shafranov method. A quantitative analysis of the reconnection condition and the degree of intermittency reveals that rope–rope magnetic reconnection is the most likely site for genesis of interplanetary intermittency turbulence in this event. The dynamic pressure pulse resulting from this reconnection triggers the onset of a geomagnetic storm.

Non-Gaussianity and cross-scale coupling in interplanetary magnetic field turbulence during a rope–rope magnetic reconnection event

“…This indicates that this interval is characterized by a higher degree of non-Gaussianity. These results are in agreement with the results of Chian et al (2016), which found that the interior of IMFR-2 has lower degrees of non-Gaussianity and phase coherence, and a nearly monofractal scaling when compared with other intervals. For the interface of IMFR-2 and IMFR-3 they observed higher degrees of non-Gaussianity and phase synchronization, and a strong departure from monofractality.…”

“…This event was recently characterized by Chian et al (2016). They demonstrated the occurrence of magnetic reconnection at the interface region of two IMFRs and that this reconnection can be the origin of interplanetary intermittent turbulence.…”

“…This interface region was identified as a source of intermittent turbulence by Chian et al (2016). A current sheet was detected at the leading edge of IMFR-1 using data from ACE and Cluster-1, and a current sheet was detected at the interface region between IMFR-2 and IMFR-3 using data from Cluster-1, ACE and Wind (Chian et al, 2016). The S-K parabolic relation described by Eq.…”

“…Magnetic flux ropes are magnetic structures described as bundles of twisted, currentcarrying magnetic field lines bent into a tube-like shape, spiralling around a common axis (Russell and Elphic, 1979;Telloni et al, 2016;Chian et al, 2016). During this event three IMFRs were identified by Chian et al (2016) using a combination of criteria for large-scale magnetic cloud boundary layers (Lepping et al, 1997;Wei et al, 2003) and small-scale IMFRs (Moldwin et al, 2000;Feng et al, 2007).…”

“…In a recent paper (Chian et al, 2016) it was shown that magnetic reconnection at the interface region between two magnetic flux ropes is responsible for the genesis of interplanetary intermittent turbulence. The normalized third-order moment (skewness) and the normalized fourthorder moment (kurtosis) display a quadratic relation with a parabolic shape that is commonly observed in observational data from turbulence in fluids and plasmas, and is linked to non-Gaussian fluctuations due to coherent structures.…”