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Acceleration of solar wind ions to 1 MeV by electromagnetic structures upstream of the Earth's bow shock

Yamauchi, M.; Stasiewicz, K.; Markidis, S. +2 more

We present measurements from the ESA/NASA Cluster mission that show in situ acceleration of ions to energies of 1 MeV outside the bow shock. The observed heating can be associated with the presence of electromagnetic structures with strong spatial gradients of the electric field that lead to ion gyro-phase breaking and to the onset of chaos in ion…