Physics – Plasma Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufmsm51b1787s&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #SM51B-1787
Physics
Plasma Physics
[2724] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetopause And Boundary Layers, [2728] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetosheath, [2744] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetotail, [7833] Space Plasma Physics / Mathematical And Numerical Techniques
Scientific paper
The eventual goal of this work is to develop an approximate analytical representation of solar-wind streamlines in the magnetosheath surrounding a magnetosphere of rather general shape. Previous analytical representations of magnetosheath streamlines and magnetic fields have invoked magnetopause shapes that conform to standard coordinate systems (e.g., spherical, cylindrical, paraboloidal, ellipsoidal), but it seems now that such a restriction on magnetopause shape is unnecessary. In the present work it is assumed only that the magnetopause is a continuously differentiable convex surface axisymmetric about the Sun-Earth line. This geometry permits the construction of an orthogonal coordinate system (mu, eta, chi) such that eta is the cosine of the cone angle between the Sun-Earth line and any conical surafce extending normally outward from the magnetopause, mu is a measure of the perpendicular distance of any magnetosheath point from the magnetopause, and chi is an azimuthal coordinate measured around the Sun-Earth line. It is convenient here to assign a label mu = mu* to the magnetopause itself, so that mu - mu* denotes perpendicular distance from the magnetopause and mu* is an adjustable parameter roughly comparable to the radius of the magnetotail. This choice provides for a rough correspondence between the (mu, eta, chi) coordinates introduced here and the ellipsoidal coordinates used in our previous efforts at magnetosheath modeling.
Chen Margaret W.
Schulz Michael
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