Detection of Rolled-up Kelvin-Helmholtz Vortices From Single-Spacecraft Data

Details Detection of Rolled-up Kelvin-Helmholtz Vortices From Single-Spacecraft Data Detection of Rolled-up Kelvin-Helmholtz Vortices From Single-Spacecraft Data

Dec 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005agufmsm52a..03h&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2005, abstract #SM52A-03

Physics

2724 Magnetopause And Boundary Layers, 2748 Magnetotail Boundary Layers, 2752 Mhd Waves And Instabilities (2149, 6050, 7836), 7839 Nonlinear Phenomena (4400, 6944), 7859 Transport Processes

Scientific paper

Recent numerical simulation studies show that plasma mixing is inevitably achieved as soon as the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI), which can become unstable along the flank magnetopause, has grown nonlinearly to form highly rolled-up vortices. Thus, identification of the rolled-up KH vortices with in situ measurements is an important task as a step to establish the mechanism of transporting solar wind plasmas into the magnetosphere and conditions under which the vortices can be generated. In the present study, we show that the rolled-up vortices can be detected even in single-spacecraft measurements of the bulk plasma parameters. Numerical simulations of the KHI indicate that the low-density, magnetospheric plasma is accelerated, within a highly rolled-up KH vortex, to have an anti-sunward velocity higher than the magnetosheath flow. This high-speed and low-density plasma can be seen only after a vortex is rolled up, and even when the vortices have collapsed or coalesced, thus this signature can be used as an indicator of the roll-up. This signature was indeed found in the Cluster multi-spacecraft measurements of the rolled-up vortices at the dusk flank magnetopause [Hasegawa et al., Nature, 430, p.755, 2004]. By use of this indicator, we have searched for rolled-up vortices in observations by the Geotail spacecraft in the flanks which show quasi-periodic plasma and field perturbations in the boundary layer, possibly associated with the KHI. As a result, it was found that the vortices do roll up on both dawn and dusk sides and that such vortices events are not rare under northward IMF conditions. Based on this Geotail data survey, we discuss the relationship between the roll-up and plasma mixing in the boundary layer.

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