Evidence of Magnetic Reconnection with Multiple X Lines and Flux Ropes in Thin Magnetotail Currents Observed by the MMS Spacecraft: Results of Grad–Shafranov Reconstruction

Abstract

Abstract There is some observational evidence for the existence of multiple X line magnetic reconnection (MR) in various planetary magnetotails but the overall observationally based MR topology in two or three dimensions is still not available. This study reports the first 2D structures of MR with multiple X lines and magnetic islands observed by the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) spacecraft in the Earth’s magnetotail based on the Grad–Shafranov (GS) reconstruction model with temperature anisotropy. The tearing mode geometry is revealed within the spatial domain of 3800 km × 800 km with multiple X lines and magnetic islands on the spatial scale of the sub-ion inertial length or a few times the electron gyroradius. The MR event is seen by all four MMS spacecraft but the magnetic islands are caught only by the MMS3 spacecraft, and exhibit large firehose-type temperature anisotropy. The GS reconstructed maps based on the MMS1, 2, and 4 show a single X line and partial ion-scale magnetic islands with a smaller degree of temperature anisotropy. The reconstruction results remain the same for various energy closures, and the firehose-type anisotropy is found to yield smaller magnetic islands than the isotropic cases, which is opposite to the previous findings for MR events with mirror-type temperature anisotropy.