Continuous Magnetic Reconnection at the Earth's Magnetopause

S. A. Fuselier (Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center)

The concept of reconnection at the Earth's magnetopause was developed from attempts to 
understand the explosive nature of solar flares.  Later, it was applied to the Earth's 
magnetotail, where similar explosive events (i.e., substorms) occur.  Surprisingly, it now 
seems apparent that reconnection at the Earth's dayside magnetopause has properties 
very different from the explosive events that occur on the sun or in the Earth's 
magnetotail.  To be sure, there appears to be transient reconnection at the magnetopause.  
However, recent results also show that reconnection at the magnetopause can occur 
continuously for many hours.  Even more significant, this "quasi-steady" reconnection 
may occur for long periods of time with only small variations in the actual reconnection 
rate.  This talk focuses on new observational evidence for quasi-steady reconnection at 
the magnetopause and raises the possibility that there may be two types of reconnection 
processes:  quasi-steady and transient.  Whether these two types of reconnection are 
initiated or maintained differently remains an open question that may be answered by 
future space missions.