Search results for "CURRENT SHEET"
showing 10 items of 10 documents
Understanding the Origins of Problem Geomagnetic Storms Associated with "Stealth" Coronal Mass Ejections.
2021
Geomagnetic storms are an important aspect of space weather and can result in significant impacts on space- and ground-based assets. The majority of strong storms are associated with the passage of interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) in the near-Earth environment. In many cases, these ICMEs can be traced back unambiguously to a specific coronal mass ejection (CME) and solar activity on the frontside of the Sun. Hence, predicting the arrival of ICMEs at Earth from routine observations of CMEs and solar activity currently makes a major contribution to the forecasting of geomagnetic storms. However, it is clear that some ICMEs, which may also cause enhanced geomagnetic activity, cann…
Reconstruction of the Parker spiral with the Reverse in situ data and MHD APproach - RIMAP
2021
The reconstruction of plasma parameters in the interplanetary medium is very important to understand the interplanetary propagation of solar eruptions and for Space Weather application purposes. Because only a few spacecraft are measuring in situ these parameters, reconstructions are currently performed by running complex numerical Magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) simulations starting from remote sensing observations of the Sun. Current models apply full 3D MHD simulations of the corona or extrapolations of photospheric magnetic fields combined with semi-empirical relationships to derive the plasma parameters on a sphere centered on the Sun (inner boundary). The plasma is then propagated in the i…
Computational general relativistic force-free electrodynamics
2021
Scientific codes are an indispensable link between theory and experiment; in (astro-)plasma physics, such numerical tools are one window into the universe's most extreme flows of energy. The discretization of Maxwell's equations - needed to make highly magnetized (astro)physical plasma amenable to its numerical modeling - introduces numerical diffusion. It acts as a source of dissipation independent of the system's physical constituents. Understanding the numerical diffusion of scientific codes is the key to classify their reliability. It gives specific limits in which the results of numerical experiments are physical. We aim at quantifying and characterizing the numerical diffusion propert…
A coupled map as a model of the dynamics of the magnetotail current sheet
2001
Abstract A magnetic field model of the magnetotail current sheet in the form of a coupled-map lattice (CML) is presented. It is continuously driven (“running”) and based on the MHD diffusion equation. Solar wind vBS data (solar wind speed multiplied by the southward component of IMF) are used for driving the model, and it is shown to exhibit perturbations (avalanches) with power-law scalings in their distributions of duration and size. Such distributions may indicate self-organized critical (SOC) behavior. Furthermore, it is shown that the power spectra of the model outputs are of bicolor power-law form with different slopes for high and low frequencies. Although the “running” model gives p…
A coupled-map model for the magnetotail current sheet
1999
A magnetic field model of the magnetotail current sheet in the form of a coupled-map lattice (CML) is presented. It is a continuously driven and based on the MHD diffusion equation. Solar wind vBs data (solar wind speed multiplied by the southward component of IMF) are used for driving the model, and it is shown to exhibit perturbations (avalanches) with power-law scalings in their distributions of duration and size. Such distributions may indicate self-organized critical (SOC) behavior. Furthermore, it is shown that the power spectra of the model outputs are of bicolor power-law form with different slopes for high and low frequencies. The model parameters determine the frequency of the bre…
A multispacecraft analysis of a small-scale transient entrained by solar wind streams
2009
The images taken by the Heliospheric Imagers (HIs), part of the SECCHI imaging package onboard the pair of STEREO spacecraft, provide information on the radial and latitudinal evolution of the plasma compressed inside corotating interaction regions (CIRs). A plasma density wave imaged by the HI instrument onboard STEREO-B was found to propagate towards STEREO-A, enabling a comparison between simultaneous remote-sensing and in situ observations of its structure to be performed. In situ measurements made by STEREO-A show that the plasma density wave is associated with the passage of a CIR. The magnetic field compressed after the CIR stream interface (SI) is found to have a planar distribution…
Nonlinear energy dissipation in a cellular automaton magnetotail field model
1999
A magnetic field model of the magnetotail current sheet based on cellular automaton (CA) is presented. The present isotropic model is a continuously driven, two-dimensional running CA. The model has a physical interpretation in terms of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations, and features self-organized critical (SOC) behavior with power-law scalings both in durations and sizes of instabilities (avalanches). The model has nonlinear energy dissipation, and shows avalanches with and without an external trigger. Thus the model reproduces some of the statistical features recently observed in the magnetotail.
Diffusivity in force-free simulations of global magnetospheres
2021
Abstract: Assuming that the numerical diffusivity triggered by violations of the force-free electrodynamics constraints is a proxy for the physical resistivity, we examine its impact on the overall dynamics of force-free aligned pulsar magnetospheres endowed with an equatorial current sheet. We assess the constraint violations as a diffusivity source. The effects of modifications on electric fields used to restore force-free conditions are not confined to the equatorial current sheet, but modify the magnetospheric dynamics on timescales shorter than the pulsar rotational period. These corrections propagate especially via a channel that was unexplored, namely, changes induced to the electric…
Tracing the ICME plasma with a MHD simulation
2021
The determination of the chemical composition of interplanetary coronal mass ejection (ICME) plasma is an open issue. More specifically, it is not yet fully understood how remote sensing observations of the solar corona plasma during solar disturbances evolve into plasma properties measured in situ away from the Sun. The ambient conditions of the background interplanetary plasma are important for space weather because they influence the evolutions, arrival times, and geo-effectiveness of the disturbances. The Reverse In situ and MHD APproach (RIMAP) is a technique to reconstruct the heliosphere on the ecliptic plane (including the magnetic Parker spiral) directly from in situ measurements a…
Exploring the Solar Wind from Its Source on the Corona into the Inner Heliosphere during the First Solar Orbiter-Parker Solar Probe Quadrature
2021
This Letter addresses the first Solar Orbiter (SO) -- Parker Solar Probe (PSP) quadrature, occurring on January 18, 2021, to investigate the evolution of solar wind from the extended corona to the inner heliosphere. Assuming ballistic propagation, the same plasma volume observed remotely in corona at altitudes between 3.5 and 6.3 solar radii above the solar limb with the Metis coronagraph on SO can be tracked to PSP, orbiting at 0.1 au, thus allowing the local properties of the solar wind to be linked to the coronal source region from where it originated. Thanks to the close approach of PSP to the Sun and the simultaneous Metis observation of the solar corona, the flow-aligned magnetic fiel…