A series of plasma flow vortices in the tail plasma sheet associated with solar wind pressure enhancement

Details A series of plasma flow vortices in the tail plasma sheet associated with solar wind pressure enhancement A series of plasma flow vortices in the tail plasma sheet associated with solar wind pressure enhancement

Sep 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010jgra..11509204t&link_type=abstract

Journal of Geophysical Research, Volume 115, Issue A9, CiteID A09204

Physics

Magnetospheric Physics: Plasma Sheet, Magnetospheric Physics: Magnetospheric Configuration And Dynamics, Magnetospheric Physics: Plasma Convection (2463), Magnetospheric Physics: Solar Wind/Magnetosphere Interactions

Scientific paper

A series of earthward-moving (˜140 km/s) plasma flow vortices with anticlockwise (when viewed from above the ecliptic plane) rotation was detected in the dawnside tail plasma sheet between 1255 and 1400 UT on 6 July 2003. These flow vortices were observed under the condition of northward interplanetary magnetic field with an enhanced solar wind dynamic pressure. Analysing the plasma and magnetic field data from the Cluster spacecraft and using the Grad-Shafranov streamline reconstruction technique, we show that the vortex-like plasma structures have a very similar shape: a Vx component dominant in the dawnside, while a distinct Vy component appears in the duskside, and each structure has a size of about 1.8 × 0.68 RE, approximately in the xy plane of GSM coordinates. It is found that the vortices contain both magnetosphere-originated hot (N ˜ 0.1 cm-3, E > 3 keV) and magnetosheath-originated denser and colder (N > 0.2 cm-3, E < 1 keV) populations on the closed field lines. The vortices involve fast earthward flows (Vx > 200 km/s) of mainly sheath-originated plasmas. We suggest that these observed plasma flow vortices are generated inside the magnetotail during the prolonged and intensified compression of the magnetosphere by the enhanced solar wind dynamic pressure.

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