Mass density and pressure changes across the dayside magnetopause

Details Mass density and pressure changes across the dayside magnetopause Mass density and pressure changes across the dayside magnetopause

Mar 1993

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1993jgr....98.3935f&link_type=abstract

Journal of Geophysical Research (ISSN 0148-0227), vol. 98, no. A3, p. 3935-3942.

Physics

22

Geomagnetism, Lines Of Force, Magnetopause, Plasma Density, Plasma Pressure, Boundary Layer Plasmas, Data Correlation, Daytime

Scientific paper

Plasma composition measurements at about 2-min time resolution from 27 magnetopause crossings are used to determine if mass density rho, modified by the anisotropic pressure term (1-alpha), is constant across the magnetopause. Pressure and mass density in the magnetosheath and low-latitude boundary layer were found to be dominated by H(+) except on one occasion when O(+) was the dominant contributor to the total mass density in the low-latitude boundary layer. Using these measurements, it is found that rho(1-alpha) is not constant for almost all magnetopause crossings even when there is independent evidence for magnetic reconnection and an open magnetopause. These results indicate that the reason why rho(1-alpha) is not constant across the magnetopause is that the H(+) density decrease from the magnetosheath to the low-latitude boundary layer is not compensated for by either a change in the pressure anisotropy or a change in the total mass density and suggest that the magnetopause can never be described as a time-stationary 1D rotational discontinuity.

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