Hot electrons as tracers of large-scale structure of magnetotail current sheets

This paper is devoted to the investigation of the vertical electron temperature distribution in thin currents sheets of the Earth magnetotail. The dependence of electron temperature on magnetic field T(e)(B(x)) is examined for 62 thin currents sheet crossings by the Cluster spacecraft. The profiles T(e)(B(x)) are approximated by the simple expression T(e) approximate to T(emax)(1 - alpha(B(x)/B(ext))(2)), where alpha is a constant parameter, T(emax) is the maximum value of electron temperature and B(ext) is the amplitude of B(x) obtained from the vertical pressure balance. The mean value of the parameter <alpha > approximate to 1. The profiles T(e)(B(x)) are described in the frame of the theory of adiabatic electron heating in the course of the Earthward plasma convection. The comparison between the observed values of alpha and the theoretical predictions allows to estimate the scale L(x) of observed current sheets along the magnetotail (B(z) similar to (-x/L(x))(h)) and the ratio of L(x) and current sheet thickness L(z). For the majority of the observed thin current sheets L(x) is an element of [5R(E), 20R(E)] and the average ratio of the scales < L(x)/L(z)> approximate to 25. Citation: Artemyev, A.V., L.M. Zelenyi, A.A. Petrukovich, and R. Nakamura (2011), Hot electrons as tracers of large-scale structure of magnetotail current sheets, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L14102, doi: 10.1029/2011GL047979.