Solar Orbiter’s first Venus Flyby: MAG observations of structures and waves associated with the induced Venusian magnetosphere

<p>The induced magnetosphere of Venus is created by the interaction of the solar wind and embedded interplanetary magnetic field with the exosphere and ionosphere of Venus. Solar Orbiter entered Venus’s magnetotail far downstream, > 70 Venus radii, of the planet and exited the magnetosphere over the north pole. This offered a unique view of the system over distances that were only flown through once by three other missions before, Mariner 10, Galileo and Bepi-Colombo. The large-scale structure and activity of the induced magnetosphere is studied as well as the high-frequency plasma waves both in the magnetosphere and in a limited region upstream of the planet where interaction with Venus’s exosphere is expected.  It is shown that Venus’s magnetotail is very active during the Solar Orbiter flyby. Structures such as flux ropes, and reconnection sites are encountered as well as a strongly overdraping of the magnetic field downstream of the bow shock and planet. High-frequency plasma waves (up to 6 times the local proton cyclotron frequency) are observed in the magnetotail, which are identified as Doppler-shifted proton cyclotron waves, whereas in the upstream solar wind these waves appear just below the proton cyclotron frequency (as expected) but are very patchy. The bow shock is quasi perpendicular, however, expected mirror mode activity is not found directly behind it; instead there is strong cyclotron wave power. This is most-likely caused by the relatively low plasma-beta  behind the bow shock. Much further downstream in the magnetosheath mirror mode of magnetic hole structures are identified. This presentation will take place after the second Venus flyby by Solar Orbiter and BepiColombo and Solar Orbiter on 9 and 10 August, respectively.</p>

Subgrid modelling of ion pitch-angle scattering for magnetosheath waves in a global hybrid-Vlasov simulation

<p>Numerical simulations are widely used in modern space physics and are an essential tool to understand or discover new phenomena which cannot be observed using spacecraft measurements. However, numerical simulations are limited by the space grid resolution of the system and the computational costs of having a high spatial resolution. Therefore, some physics may be unresolved in part of the system due to its low spatial resolution. We have previously identified, using Vlasiator, that the proton cyclotron instability is not resolved for grid cell sizes larger than four times the inertial length in the solar wind, for waves in the downstream of the quasi-perpendicular shock in the magnetosheath of a global hybrid-Vlasov simulation. This leads to unphysically high perpendicular temperature and a dominance of the mirror mode waves. In this study, we use high-resolution simulations to measure and quantify how the proton cyclotron instability diffuses and isotropizes the velocity distribution functions. We investigate the process of pitch-angle scattering during the development of the instability and propose a method for the sub-grid modelling of the diffusion process of the instability at low resolution. This allows us to model the isotropization of the velocity distribution functions and to reduce the temperature anisotropy in the plasma while saving computational resources.</p>

Using Compressibility and Electric Field to Characterize Circularly-Polarized Waves Near the Proton Cyclotron Frequency Observed by Solar Orbiter

<p>We report Solar Orbiter observations of electromagnetic waves near the proton cyclotron frequency during the first perihelion. The waves have polarization close to circular and have wave vectors closely aligned with the background magnetic field. Such waves are potentially important for heating of the solar wind as their frequency and polarization allows effective energy exchange with solar wind protons. The Radio and Plasma Waves (RPW) instrument provides a high-cadence measurement of plasma density and electric field which we use together with the magnetic field measured by MAG to characterize these waves. In particular we compute the compressibility and the phase between the density fluctuations and the parallel component of the magnetic field, and show that these have a distinct behavior for the waves compared to the Alfvénic turbulence. We compare the observations to multi-fluid plasma dispersion and identify the waves modes corresponding to the observed waves. We discuss the importance of the waves for solar wind heating.</p>

Persistence of Ion Cyclotron Waves and Stochasticity of Kinetic Alfvén Waves in the Solar Wind

This paper investigates the nature of the physical processes underlying the origin of the Ion Cyclotron Waves (ICWs) and Kinetic Alfvén Waves (KAWs) in the solar wind, by studying their Waiting Time Distributions (WTDs). The results show that ICWs and KAWs do not share common statistical properties: while KAWs independently occur as stochastic, uncorrelated wave packets governed by Poisson statistics, ICWs are highly correlated, thus departing from the Poisson hypothesis. The results based on the WTD analysis may cast more light on the mechanisms actively at work in the generation of the two wave modes. Specifically, while the stochastic character of KAWs may be reminiscent of the random convection-driven jostling of the flux-tube foot-points that generates the Alfvén waves in the lower solar atmosphere, the correlations among the ICW events can be effectively explained on the basis of the persistent nature of the mechanism underlying the local origin of ICWs, namely the proton cyclotron instability. Alternative explanations for the observed distribution of ICW waiting times, based on a piecewise-constant Poisson process involving time-varying rates, are also reported.

Resolution dependence of magnetosheath waves in global hybrid-Vlasov simulations

Kinetically driven plasma waves are fundamental for a description of the thermodynamical properties of the Earth's magnetosheath. The most commonly observed ion-scale instabilities are generated by temperature anisotropy of the ions, such as the mirror and proton cyclotron instabilities. We investigate here the spatial resolution dependence of the mirror and proton cyclotron instabilities in a global hybrid-Vlasov simulation using the Vlasiator model; we do this in order to find optimal resolutions and help future global hybrid-Vlasov simulations to save resources when investigating those instabilities in the magnetosheath. We compare the proton velocity distribution functions, power spectra and growth rates of the instabilities in a set of simulations with three different spatial resolutions but otherwise identical set-up. We find that the proton cyclotron instability is absent at the lowest resolution and that only the mirror instability remains, which leads to an increased temperature anisotropy in the simulation. We conclude that the proton cyclotron instability, its saturation and the reduction of the anisotropy to marginal levels are resolved at the highest spatial resolution. A further increase in resolution does not lead to a better description of the instability to an extent that would justify this increase at the cost of numerical resources in future simulations. We also find that spatial resolutions between 1.32 and 2.64 times the inertial length in the solar wind present acceptable limits for the resolution within which the velocity distribution functions resulting from the proton cyclotron instability are still bi-Maxwellian and reach marginal stability levels. Our results allow us to determine a range of spatial resolutions suitable for the modelling of the proton cyclotron and mirror instabilities and should be taken into consideration regarding the optimal grid spacing for the modelling of these two instabilities, within available computational resources.