HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Astron. Space Sci.
Sec. Space Physics
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspas.2025.1664531
Occurrence of Magnetic Reconnection in the Heliospheric Current Sheet
Provisionally accepted
- 1Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory (DOE), Los Alamos, United States
- 2Boston University Center for Space Physics, Boston, United States
- 3Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, United States
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We have analyzed the solar wind properties associated with a comparable number of the heliospheric current sheet (HCS) crossing events by Parker Solar Probe (PSP) ranging from 0.07 to 0.3 au and Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) at 0.99 au. Nearly all PSP events (7 out of 8) show signatures of magnetic reconnection, which are more frequent than the ACE events (5 out of 8) that show reconnection. Because the HCS reconnection events have occurred in a variety of wind speeds and plasma conditions, for each event, we propose to define an approximate aspect ratio (width/length) of HCS as the ratio between the absolute HCS width (derived from observations) and the distance traveled by Alfvén waves over the propagation time of the solar wind. We find that the aspect ratio defined in such a way tends to be smaller than 0.01 for most reconnecting events, and becomes much larger than 0.01 for non-reconnecting events. This analysis also explains the different occurrence rates of reconnection observed by PSP and ACE. Potential consequences of magnetic reconnection at the HCS are discussed.
Keywords: Solar wind, magnetohydrodynamics, magnetic reconnection, Heliospheric current sheet, Alfvén waves
Received: 12 Jul 2025; Accepted: 25 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Du, Li, Skoug, Steinberg and Guo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Senbei Du, Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory (DOE), Los Alamos, United States
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