Dipolarization Flux Bundles

Abstract

Localized fast plasma flows in the geomagnetic tail (bursty bulk flows, BBF, and dipolarizing flux bundles, DFB, having smaller spatial scale) which have been observed in recent years onboard CLUSTER and THEMIS spacecraft, are closely related to processes producing thin current sheets observed on the same satellites. This follows from our previous theoretical analysis and numerical simulation of processes leading to generation of thin current sheets. The theory also makes it possible to explain essential deviations in the behavior of DFB from predictions of the MHD simulation carried out in recent years by other authors. In the framework of the two-fluid model, such deviations can be understood taking into account the ion inertial drift current in a localized three-dimensional current system of DFB.