scholarly journals The solar wind angular-momentum flux observed during Solar Orbiter's first orbit

Author(s):  
Daniel Verscharen ◽  
David Stansby ◽  
Adam Finley ◽  
Christopher Owen ◽  
Timothy Horbury ◽  
...  

<p>The Solar Orbiter mission is currently in its cruise phase, during which the spacecraft's in-situ instrumentation measures the solar wind and the electromagnetic fields at different heliocentric distances. </p><p>We evaluate the solar wind angular-momentum flux by combining proton data from the Solar Wind Analyser (SWA) Proton-Alpha Sensor (PAS) and magnetic-field data from the Magnetometer (MAG) instruments on board Solar Orbiter during its first orbit. This allows us to evaluate the angular momentum in the protons in addition to that stored in magnetic-field stresses, and compare these to previous observations from other spacecraft. We discuss the statistical properties of the angular-momentum flux and its dependence on solar-wind properties. </p><p>Our results largely agree with previous measurements of the solar wind’s angular-momentum flux in the inner heliosphere and demonstrate the potential for future detailed studies of large-scale properties of the solar wind with the data from Solar Orbiter.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Henry Lane ◽  
Adrian Grocott ◽  
Nathan Anthony Case ◽  
Maria-Theresia Walach

Abstract. Previous observations have provided a clear indication that the dusk-dawn (v⊥y) sense of both slow (< 200 km s−1) and fast (> 200 km s−1) convective magnetotail flows is strongly governed by the Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF) By conditions. The related “untwisting hypothesis” of magnetotail dynamics is commonly invoked to explain this dependence, in terms of a large-scale magnetospheric asymmetry. In the current study, we present Cluster spacecraft observations from 12 October 2006 of earthward convective magnetotail plasma flows whose dusk-dawn sense disagrees with the untwisting hypothesis of IMF By control of the magnetotail flows. During this interval, observations of the upstream solar wind conditions from OMNI, and ionospheric convection data using SuperDARN, indicate a large-scale magnetospheric morphology consistent with positive IMF By penetration into the magnetotail. Inspection of the in-situ Cluster magnetic field data reveals a flapping of the magnetotail current sheet; a phenomenon known to influence dusk-dawn flow. Results from the curlometer analysis technique suggest that the dusk-dawn flow perturbations may have been driven by the J x B force associated with a dawnward-propagating flapping of the magnetotail current sheet, locally overriding the expected IMF By control of the flows. We conclude that invocation of the untwisting hypothesis may be inappropriate when interpreting intervals of dynamic magnetotail behaviour such as during current sheet flapping.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Davies ◽  
Christian Möstl ◽  
Matthew Owens ◽  
Andreas Weiss ◽  
Tanja Amerstorfer ◽  
...  

&lt;p&gt;On April 19th 2020 a CME was detected by Solar Orbiter at a heliocentric distance of 0.8 AU and was also observed in-situ on April 20th by both Wind and BepiColombo. During this time, BepiColombo had just completed a flyby of the Earth and therefore the longitudinal separation between BepiColombo and Wind was just 1.4&amp;#176;. The total longitudinal separation of Solar Orbiter and both spacecraft near the Earth was less than 5&amp;#176;, providing an excellent opportunity for a radial alignment study of the CME. We use the in-situ observations of the magnetic field at Solar Orbiter with those at Wind and BepiColombo to analyse the large-scale properties of the CME and compare results to those predicted using remote observations at STEREO-A, providing a global picture of the CME as it propagated from the Sun to 1 AU.&lt;/p&gt;


The first spacecraft encounter with a comet took place on 11 September 1985 when the International Cometary Explorer spacecraft passed through the tail of Comet Giacobini-Zinner at a distance of 7800 km from the nucleus. It provided the first definitive in-situ information concerning the interaction of a cometary atmosphere with the flowing solar-wind plasma, and the results of initial analyses are reviewed in this paper. Large-scale mhd aspects of the interaction largely conform to prior expectation. The flow surrounding the comet is mass-loaded and slowed by situ ionization and pick-up of heavy cometary neutrals, and the solar-wind magnetic field consequently becomes draped around the obstacle, and forms an induced magnetotail. Substantial evidence exists for the permanent presence of a weak shock lying in the subsolar mass-loaded region upstream from the comet, through whether the spacecraft itself passed through shocks on the cometary flanks remains controversial. There is no doubt, however, that a sharp boundary was observed both inbound and outbound (centred on ca. 09h29 and 12h20 U.T.) whose width is an energetic heavyion Larmor radius ( ca. 10 4 km), where the flow is deflected away from the comet and slowed, and where the magnetic field and plasma become compressed and very turbulent. The location of this boundary is also consistent with that expected for a weak shock based upon the known Giacobini-Zinner water-molecule production rate. An unexpected feature of the interaction was the extreme levels of field and plasma turbulence, and broadband wave activity observed in the region of massloaded flow.


2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (S264) ◽  
pp. 369-372
Author(s):  
Pablo R. Muñoz ◽  
Abraham C.-L. Chian ◽  
Rodrigo A. Miranda ◽  
Michio Yamada

AbstractWe apply single- and multi-spacecraft techniques to search for currents sheets in the solar wind during the ICME event of 21 January 2005, using the Cluster magnetic field data. Two large-scale currents sheets are detected at the leading boundary of the ICME ejecta using the single-spacecraft technique, which exhibit physical characteristics typical of magnetic reconnection exhausts in the solar wind.


1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Bothmer ◽  
R. Schwenn

Abstract. Plasma and magnetic field data from the Helios 1/2 spacecraft have been used to investigate the structure of magnetic clouds (MCs) in the inner heliosphere. 46 MCs were identified in the Helios data for the period 1974–1981 between 0.3 and 1 AU. 85% of the MCs were associated with fast-forward interplanetary shock waves, supporting the close association between MCs and SMEs (solar mass ejections). Seven MCs were identified as direct consequences of Helios-directed SMEs, and the passage of MCs agreed with that of interplanetary plasma clouds (IPCs) identified as white-light brightness enhancements in the Helios photometer data. The total (plasma and magnetic field) pressure in MCs was higher and the plasma-β lower than in the surrounding solar wind. Minimum variance analysis (MVA) showed that MCs can best be described as large-scale quasi-cylindrical magnetic flux tubes. The axes of the flux tubes usually had a small inclination to the ecliptic plane, with their azimuthal direction close to the east-west direction. The large-scale flux tube model for MCs was validated by the analysis of multi-spacecraft observations. MCs were observed over a range of up to ~60° in solar longitude in the ecliptic having the same magnetic configuration. The Helios observations further showed that over-expansion is a common feature of MCs. From a combined study of Helios, Voyager and IMP data we found that the radial diameter of MCs increases between 0.3 and 4.2 AU proportional to the distance, R, from the Sun as R0.8 (R in AU). The density decrease inside MCs was found to be proportional to R–2.4, thus being stronger compared to the average solar wind. Four different magnetic configurations, as expected from the flux-tube concept, for MCs have been observed in situ by the Helios probes. MCs with left- and right-handed magnetic helicity occurred with about equal frequencies during 1974–1981, but surprisingly, the majority (74%) of the MCs had a south to north (SN) rotation of the magnetic field vector relative to the ecliptic. In contrast, an investigation of solar wind data obtained near Earth's orbit during 1984–1991 showed a preference for NS-clouds. A direct correlation was found between MCs and large quiescent filament disappearances (disparition brusques, DBs). The magnetic configurations of the filaments, as inferred from the orientation of the prominence axis, the polarity of the overlying field lines and the hemispheric helicity pattern observed for filaments, agreed well with the in situ observed magnetic structure of the associated MCs. The results support the model of MCs as large-scale expanding quasi-cylindrical magnetic flux tubes in the solar wind, most likely caused by SMEs associated with eruptions of large quiescent filaments. We suggest that the hemispheric dependence of the magnetic helicity structure observed for solar filaments can explain the preferred orientation of MCs in interplanetary space as well as their solar cycle behavior. However, the white-light features of SMEs and the measured volumes of their interplanetary counterparts suggest that MCs may not simply be just Hα-prominences, but that SMEs likely convect large-scale coronal loops overlying the prominence axis out of the solar atmosphere.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harlan Spence ◽  
Kristopher Klein ◽  
HelioSwarm Science Team

&lt;p&gt;Recently selected for phase A study for NASA&amp;#8217;s Heliophysics MidEx Announcement of Opportunity, the HelioSwarm Observatory proposes to transform our understanding of the physics of turbulence in space and astrophysical plasmas by deploying nine spacecraft to measure the local plasma and magnetic field conditions at many points, with separations between the spacecraft spanning MHD and ion scales.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;HelioSwarm resolves the transfer and dissipation of turbulent energy in weakly-collisional magnetized plasmas with a novel configuration of spacecraft in the solar wind. These simultaneous multi-point, multi-scale measurements of space plasmas allow us to reach closure on two science goals comprised of six science objectives: (1) reveal how turbulent energy is transferred in the most probable, undisturbed solar wind plasma and distributed as a function of scale and time; (2) reveal how this turbulent cascade of energy varies with the background magnetic field and plasma parameters in more extreme solar wind environments; (3) quantify the transfer of turbulent energy between fields, flows, and ion heat; (4) identify thermodynamic impacts of intermittent structures on ion distributions; (5) determine how solar wind turbulence affects and is affected by large-scale solar wind structures; and (6) determine how strongly driven turbulence differs from that in the undisturbed solar wind.&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;


2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (10) ◽  
pp. 1844006
Author(s):  
A. Dorodnitsyn ◽  
T. Kallman

Large scale magnetic field can be easily dragged from galactic scales toward AGN along with accreting gas. There, it can contribute to both the formation of AGN “torus” and help to remove angular momentum from the gas which fuels AGN accretion disk. However the dynamics of such gas is also strongly influenced by the radiative feedback from the inner accretion disk. Here we present results from the three-dimensional simulations of pc-scale accretion which is exposed to intense X-ray heating.


2018 ◽  
Vol 868 (2) ◽  
pp. 137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming Xiong ◽  
Jackie A. Davies ◽  
Xueshang Feng ◽  
Bo Li ◽  
Liping Yang ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 641 ◽  
pp. A133
Author(s):  
N. Scepi ◽  
G. Lesur ◽  
G. Dubus ◽  
J. Jacquemin-Ide

Context. Dwarf novæ (DNe) and low mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) show eruptions that are thought to be due to a thermal-viscous instability in their accretion disk. These eruptions provide constraints on angular momentum transport mechanisms. Aims. We explore the idea that angular momentum transport could be controlled by the dynamical evolution of the large-scale magnetic field. We study the impact of different prescriptions for the magnetic field evolution on the dynamics of the disk. This is a first step in confronting the theory of magnetic field transport with observations. Methods. We developed a version of the disk instability model that evolves the density, the temperature, and the large-scale vertical magnetic flux simultaneously. We took into account the accretion driven by turbulence or by a magnetized outflow with prescriptions taken, respectively, from shearing box simulations or self-similar solutions of magnetized outflows. To evolve the magnetic flux, we used a toy model with physically motivated prescriptions that depend mainly on the local magnetization β, where β is the ratio of thermal pressure to magnetic pressure. Results. We find that allowing magnetic flux to be advected inwards provides the best agreement with DNe light curves. This leads to a hybrid configuration with an inner magnetized disk, driven by angular momentum losses to an MHD outflow, sharply transiting to an outer weakly-magnetized turbulent disk where the eruptions are triggered. The dynamical impact is equivalent to truncating a viscous disk so that it does not extend down to the compact object, with the truncation radius dependent on the magnetic flux and evolving as Ṁ−2/3. Conclusions. Models of DNe and LMXB light curves typically require the outer, viscous disk to be truncated in order to match the observations. There is no generic explanation for this truncation. We propose that it is a natural outcome of the presence of large-scale magnetic fields in both DNe and LMXBs, with the magnetic flux accumulating towards the center to produce a magnetized disk with a fast accretion timescale.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ovidiu Dragoş Constantinescu ◽  
Hans-Ulrich Auster ◽  
Magda Delva ◽  
Olaf Hillenmaier ◽  
Werner Magnes ◽  
...  

Abstract. In situ measurement of the magnetic field using space borne instruments requires either a magnetically clean platform and/or a very long boom for accommodating magnetometer sensors at a large distance from the spacecraft body. This significantly drives up the costs and time required to build a spacecraft. Here we present an alternative sensor configuration and an algorithm allowing for ulterior removal of the spacecraft generated disturbances from the magnetic field measurements, thus lessening the need for a magnetic cleanliness program and allowing for shorter boom length. The proposed algorithm is applied to the Service Oriented Spacecraft Magnetometer (SOSMAG) onboard the Korean geostationary satellite GeoKompsat-2A (GK2A) which uses for the first time a multi-sensor configuration for onboard data cleaning. The successful elimination of disturbances originating from several sources validates the proposed cleaning technique.


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