| Session Details | |
| Section | ST - Solar & Terrestrial Sciences |
| Session Title | From CMEs to BBFs: New Insights into Reconnection |
| Main Convener | Prof. Q.-G. Zong (University of Massachusetts Lowell, United States) |
| Co-convener(s) | Dr. Jun Lin (Yunnan Astronomical Observatory & Harvard-Smithsonian CfA, China) Prof. Zuyin Pu (Peking University, China) |
| Session Description | Magnetic reconnection is at the core of many dynamic phenomena in the universe, including solar eruptions, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), geomagnetic substorms, bursty bulk flows (BBFs) and tokamak disruptions. Because these phenomena often occur in the environments of very high electric conductivity, the process of energy conversion is usually confined to a small local region, like an X-type neutral point, the current sheet, or the quasi-separatrix layer. Typical observational signatures of the magnetic structures have been defined in two dimensions by a bipolar perturbation in Bz, accompanied by high-speed plasma flows. The proposed session has two parts. First, to encourage solar, magnetospheric, and laboratory plasma physicists to identify what we do and do not understand about magnetic reconnection and current sheets (between observers and modelers, solar and laboratory, and small-scale plasma versus large-scale processes. Related topics include formation of the current sheet, triggering of the plasma instabilities and turbulence, morphological features of magnetic field near the current sheet, rate of energy conversions, and energy partitions. The second part is to present multi-point observations of the magnetic structures and plasma properties (e.g., from ACE, Wind,Cluster, and Double Star etc.). Papers on all aspects (observations, data analysis methods, modeling and theory) are welcome. |