Classifying magnetic reconnection regions using k-means clustering: applications to energy partition
Author(s)
Waters, Cara
Eastwood, Jonathan
Fargette, Nais
Newman, David
Goldman, Martin
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental plasma process which facilitates the conversion of magnetic energy to particle energies. This local process both contributes to and is affected by a larger system, being dependent on plasma conditions and transporting energy around the system, such as Earth's magnetosphere. When studying the reconnection process with in situ spacecraft data, it can be difficult to determine where spacecraft are in relation to the reconnection structure. In this work, we use k-means clustering, an unsupervised machine learning technique, to identify regions in a 2.5-D PIC simulation of symmetric magnetic reconnection with conditions comparable to those observed in Earth’s magnetotail. This allows energy flux densities to be attributed to these regions. The ion enthalpy flux density is the most dominant form of energy flux density in the outflows, agreeing with previous studies. Poynting flux density may be dominant at some points in the outflows and is only half that of the Poynting flux density in the separatrices. The proportion of outflowing particle energy flux decreases as guide field increases. We find that k-means is beneficial for analysing data and comparing between simulations and in situ data. This demonstrates an approach which may be applied to large volumes of data to determine statistically different regions within phenomena in simulations and could be extended to in situ observations, applicable to future multi-point missions.
Date Issued
2024-10
Date Acceptance
2024-10-14
Citation
JGR: Space Physics, 2024, 129 (10)
ISSN
2169-9402
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
Journal / Book Title
JGR: Space Physics
Volume
129
Issue
10
Copyright Statement
© 2024. The Author(s).
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Identifier
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2024JA033010
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
e2024JA033010
Date Publish Online
2024-10-26