Search Publications
Global Three-Dimensional Draping of Magnetic Field Lines in Earth's Magnetosheath From In-Situ Spacecraft Measurements
Lavraud, B.; Génot, V.; Jeandet, A. +4 more
Magnetic field draping occurs when the magnetic field lines frozen in a plasma flow wrap around a body or plasma environment. The draping of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) around the Earth's magnetosphere has been confirmed in the early days of space exploration. However, its global and three-dimensional structure is known from modeling o…
Massive Multi-Mission Statistical Study and Analytical Modeling of the Earth's Magnetopause: 1. A Gradient Boosting Based Automatic Detection of Near-Earth Regions
Lavraud, B.; Jeandet, A.; Aunai, N. +3 more
We present an automatic classification method of the three near-Earth regions, the magnetosphere, the magnetosheath and the solar wind from their in situ data measurement by multiple spacecraft. Based on gradient boosting classifier, this very simple and very fast method outperforms the detection routines based on manually set thresholds. The meth…
Massive Multi-Mission Statistical Study and Analytical Modeling of the Earth's Magnetopause: 2. Shape and Location
Lavraud, B.; Jeandet, A.; Aunai, N. +3 more
The Earth magnetopause is the boundary between the magnetosphere and the shocked solar wind. Its location and shape are primarily determined by the properties of the solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) but the nature of the control parameters and to what extent they impact the stand-off distance, the flaring, and the symmetries, on …
The Wave Telescope Technique
Glassmeier, K. -H.; Narita, Y.; Motschmann, U.
Unambiguous determination of wavevectors (wavelengths and propagation directions) is one of the major challenges of space plasma observations, since conventional wave analysis methods for the single spacecraft data are limited to the time series data analysis and the wave properties are determined as a function of the frequencies in the spacecraft…
Scale-Dependent Kurtosis of Magnetic Field Fluctuations in the Solar Wind: A Multi-Scale Study With Cluster 2003-2015
Alexandrova, O.; Lion, S.; Nakamura, R. +9 more
During the lifetime of the Cluster mission, the inter-spacecraft distances in the solar wind have changed from the large, fluid, scales (∼104 km), down to the scales of protons (∼102 km). As part of the guest investigator campaign, the mission achieved a formation where a pair of spacecraft were separated by ∼7 km. The small …
Massive Multi-Mission Statistical Study and Analytical Modeling of the Earth's Magnetopause: 3. An Asymmetric Non Indented Magnetopause Analytical Model
Lavraud, B.; Jeandet, A.; Aunai, N. +3 more
In a companion statistical study, we showed that the expression of the magnetopause surface as a power law of an elliptic function of the zenith angle θ holds at lunar distances, that the flaring of the magnetopause surface is influenced by the Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF) By component and that the IMF Bx component had…
Extreme Energy Spectra of Relativistic Electron Flux in the Outer Radiation Belt
Artemyev, A. V.; Angelopoulos, V.; Mourenas, D. +1 more
Electron diffusion by whistler-mode chorus waves is one of the key processes controlling the dynamics of relativistic electron fluxes in the Earth's radiation belts. It is responsible for the acceleration of sub-relativistic electrons injected from the plasma sheet to relativistic energies as well as for their precipitation and loss into the atmos…
3D Reconnection Geometries With Magnetic Nulls: Multispacecraft Observations and Reconstructions
He, Jiansen; Guo, Ruilong; Pu, Zuyin +2 more
Magnetic reconnection is universal in various plasma environments like the solar atmosphere, planetary magnetosphere, and laboratory to trigger explosive phenomena. Its nature and magnetic structure in two dimensions (2D) have been abundantly analyzed. The three-dimensional (3D) characteristics of reconnection are different from 2D, and the myster…
Properties and Acceleration Mechanisms of Electrons Up To 200 keV Associated With a Flux Rope Pair and Reconnection X-Lines Around It in Earth's Plasma Sheet
Nakamura, Rumi; Hu, Qiang; Gershman, Daniel J. +15 more
The properties and acceleration mechanisms of electrons (<200 keV) associated with a pair of tailward traveling flux ropes and accompanied reconnection X-lines in Earth's plasma sheet are investigated with MMS measurements. Energetic electrons are enhanced on both boundaries and core of the flux ropes. The power-law spectra of energetic electro…
Electron Diffusion by Magnetosonic Waves in the Earth's Radiation Belts
Meredith, Nigel P.; Wong, Jin-Mann; Horne, Richard B. +2 more
We conduct a global survey of magnetosonic waves and compute the associated bounce- and drift-averaged diffusion coefficients, taking into account colocated measurements of fpe/fce, to assess the role of magnetosonic waves in radiation belt dynamics. The average magnetosonic wave intensities increase with increasing geomagnet…