Magnetospheric flux erosion events are flux transfer events

Recent results have shown that magnetic reconnection at the Earth's dayside magnetopause manifests itself most frequently as an impulsive process. Previous workers using data from the HEOS 2 spacecraft, noticed short time scale magnetic field perturbations inside the magnetopause, which were interpreted as flux erosion events resulting from transient reconnection in the polar cusp regions. Using higher time resolution data from the ISEE 1 and 2 satellite pair, other workers discovered certain characteristic magnetic field signatures in the magnetosheath, which were termed flux transfer events (FTEs). Here the authors show that flux erosion events and flux transfer events are the same physical phenomenon. (author)