Anomalous Flow Deflection at the Low Alfven Mach-Number Bow Shock and its Effect on the Magnetosphere

Details Anomalous Flow Deflection at the Low Alfven Mach-Number Bow Shock and its Effect on the Magnetosphere Anomalous Flow Deflection at the Low Alfven Mach-Number Bow Shock and its Effect on the Magnetosphere

Dec 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufmsm53b..03n&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #SM53B-03

Other

2154 Planetary Bow Shocks, 2724 Magnetopause And Boundary Layers, 2728 Magnetosheath, 2784 Solar Wind/Magnetosphere Interactions

Scientific paper

Earth's magnetosphere is an obstacle to the supersonic solar wind and the bow shock is formed in the front side of it. In ordinary hydrodynamics, the flow decelerated at the shock is diverted around the obstacle symmetrically about the Earth-Sun line, which is indeed observed in the magnetosheath most of the time. Here we show a case under a very low-density solar wind in which duskward flow was observed in the dawnside magnetosheath. A Rankine-Hugoniot test shows that the magnetic effect is crucial for this "wrong flow" to appear under low Alfven Mach number (MA). A full three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) simulation of the situation confirming this interpretation and earlier simulations is also performed. It is illustrated that in addition to the "wrong flow" feature, various peculiar characteristics appear in the global picture of the MHD flow interaction with the obstacle. One of these characteristics found in our simulation is skewing of the bow shock and the magnetosphere, which results in broadening of the dusk-tail magnetosheath and thickening of the dawn-tail magnetosheath. Evidence of magnetosphere skewing was detected in another low-MA solar wind event, where magnetic reconnection at the tail-flank magnetopause was significantly enhanced. The low-MA solar wind condition not only causes dawn-dusk asymmetry in shape but also possibly changes plasma transport and heating around/inside the magnetosphere.

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