Plasma flow patterns in and around magnetosheath jets

Plaschke, Ferdinand; Hietala, Heli

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-36-695-2018

Articles | Volume 36, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-36-695-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-36-695-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 36, issue 3

Regular paper

|

03 May 2018

Regular paper |

| 03 May 2018

Plasma flow patterns in and around magnetosheath jets

Ferdinand Plaschke and Heli Hietala

Data sets

Solar wind data from NASA’s OMNI high resolution data set NASA ftp://spdf.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/data/omni

THEMIS mission including level 2 FGM and ESA data THEMIS http://themis.ssl.berkeley.edu/data/themis

Short summary

Fast jets of solar wind particles drive through a slower environment in the magnetosheath, located sunward of the region dominated by the Earth’s magnetic field. THEMIS multi-spacecraft observations show that jets push ambient particles out of their way. These particles flow around the faster jets into the jets’ wake. Thereby, jets stir the magnetosheath, changing the properties of this key region whose particles and magnetic fields can directly interact with the Earth’s magnetic field.