This ongoing research program is concerned with some of the physical processes and structures that occur in thin electrical current sheets and plasma boundary layers in the Earth's magnetosphere, with special emphasis on the magnetopause. This current sheet forms the outer boundary of the magnetosphere and separates it from the rapidly streaming solar wind. The proposed research is centered in three areas. The first of these is concerned with the development and testing of data-analysis methods for single-spacecraft data that can be used to examine the two-dimensional or three-dimensional structure of the magnetopause itself as well as the geometry of bulges, or deformations of the magnetopause, caused by magnetic flux connection across the current layer (so-called FTEs) or by dynamic-pressure pulses in the solar wind. The data to be used in this part of the study were obtained by the AMPTE/IRM spacecraft. The second area concerns the development of analytic and numerical models of one-dimensional current sheets representing so-called intermediate shocks which are dissipative and rotational discontinuities, which are nondissipative. Both of these types of magnetic and plasma structures have been proposed to represent the magnetopause during periods of magnetic field reconnection. The third area of study is the reconnection process itself and the manner in which it may be initiated and grow in the region near the subsolar magnetopause. Analytical theory, as well as numerical simulation methods will be employed.
