Fast plasma flows in the transluner magnetotail

Unusual, high-speed, antisunward bursts of plasma have been discovered to persistently occur in the translunar magnetotail. Faster, cooler, and less dense than the plasma flows usually found in the translunar magnetotail, these bursts suggest that small-scale magnetic merging occurs regularly in the plasma sheet. Calculations which assume that the measured particle energy spectra are flowing hydrogen Maxwellians indicate that the bursts have bulk speed u = 250 to 700 km/s, ion temperatures kT = 20 to 100 eV, and ion densities n = 0.001 to 0.01 cm-3. Most bursts occur within one hour of changes in the tail magnetic field that suggest the passage of the Moon near magnetic bubbles. Bursts do not seem to be fundamentally caused by strong solar or geomagnetic activity. Rather, the bursts seem to result from the transfer of magnetic field energy to mantle plasma in the translunar magnetotail