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Dawn-dusk scale of dipolarization front in the Earth’s magnetotail: multi-cases study

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Abstract

We analyze three dipolarization front (DF) events to investigate their dawn-dusk scales in the Earth’s magnetotail using the Cluster measurements in year 2007, when the spacecraft separation is about 1.8 Re (Re is the Earth’s radius) and is appropriate for investigating the DF scale. Based on the Minimum Variance Analysis (MVA) and the general shape of the DF, we found that Cluster detected the center and the flank (or just beyond the flank) of DF in the same event. This means that the scale of DF is about 3.6 Re in the dawn-dusk direction, larger than that reported in previous studies. Using the semicircle function to fit the observations, we got the dawn-dusk scale of ∼3.2–3.6 Re, consistent with the rough estimation. Considering large separation among the spacecraft, the timing analysis cannot be used to obtain the normal of DF and the propagation velocity along the normal. One should be careful when performing timing analysis of DF using the Cluster data, and have to carry on MVA analysis to check the normal of DF before do timing analysis.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41174140, 41374168, 41174147 and 41204120, 41404132), research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (20110141110043), and Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-13-0446), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Funded Project, and the Fundamental Research Fund for the Central Universities (2042014kf0017). This work in Sweden was supported by the Swedish Research Council (under grants 2009-3902 and 2009-4165).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electronic and Information, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    S. Y. Huang, Z. G. Yuan, X. H. Deng, S. Fu, H. M. Li & D. D. Wang

  2. Space Science Institute, School of Astronautics, Beihang University, Beijing, China

    H. S. Fu

  3. Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala, Sweden

    A. Vaivads, Yuri V. Khotyaintsev & M. André

  4. Institute of Space Science and Technology, Nanchang University, Nanchang, China

    Y. Pang, M. Zhou & X. H. Deng

  5. School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

    L. Zhang

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  1. S. Y. Huang
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  2. H. S. Fu
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  3. A. Vaivads
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  4. Z. G. Yuan
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  7. Yuri V. Khotyaintsev
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  8. X. H. Deng
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  9. M. André
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  10. L. Zhang
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  11. S. Fu
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  12. H. M. Li
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  13. D. D. Wang
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Correspondence to S. Y. Huang.

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Huang, S.Y., Fu, H.S., Vaivads, A. et al. Dawn-dusk scale of dipolarization front in the Earth’s magnetotail: multi-cases study. Astrophys Space Sci 357, 22 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-015-2298-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-015-2298-3

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