ANGEO Annales Geophysicae ANGEO Ann. Geophys. 1432-0576 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/angeo-30-661-2012 Electron scale structures of thin current sheets in magnetic reconnection Jain N. 1 Sharma A. S. 1 Zelenyi L. M. 2 Malova H. V. 2 Dept.~of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA Institute for Space Research, Moscow, Russia 03 04 2012 30 4 661 666 Copyright: © 2012 N. Jain et al. 2012 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://angeo.copernicus.org/articles/30/661/2012/angeo-30-661-2012.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://angeo.copernicus.org/articles/30/661/2012/angeo-30-661-2012.pdf

An electron-magnetohydrodynamic model is used to simulate the structure of an electron scale current sheet during early phase of collisionless magnetic reconnection. The current sheet develops structures, viz. bifurcated, filamented and triple-peak structures at different locations in the current sheet. The reversal of the net out-of-plane electric field seen by electrons bifurcates the current sheet in the outflow regions, the individual peaks having scale sizes of a few electron skin depths. Secondary instabilities of the bifurcated CS lead to its filamentation in the outflow and separatrix regions while triple-peak structures form at reconnection sites. These structures have implications for the forthcoming NASA/MMS mission designed to resolve electron space and time scales in the magnetosphere.

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