How a Realistic Magnetosphere Alters the Polarizations of Surface, Fast Magnetosonic, and Alfvén Waves

System-scale magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves within Earth's magnetosphere are often understood theoretically using box models. While these have been highly instructive in understanding many fundamental features of the various wave modes present, they neglect the complexities of geospace such as the inhomogeneities and curvilinear geometries present. Here, we show global MHD simulations of resonant waves impulsively excited by a solar wind pressure pulse. Although many aspects of the surface, fast magnetosonic (cavity/waveguide), and Alfvén modes present agree with the box and axially symmetric dipole models, we find some predictions for large-scale waves are significantly altered in a realistic magnetosphere. The radial ordering of fast mode turning points and Alfvén resonant locations may be reversed even with monotonic wave speeds. Additional nodes along field lines that are not present in the displacement/velocity occur in both the perpendicular and compressional components of the magnetic field. Close to the magnetopause, the perpendicular oscillations of the magnetic field have the opposite handedness to the velocity. Finally, widely used detection techniques for standing waves, both across and along the field, can fail to identify their presence. We explain how all these features arise from the MHD equations when accounting for a non-uniform background field and propose modified methods that might be applied to spacecraft observations.

Modeling Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability at the High-Latitude Boundary Layer in a Global Magnetosphere Simulation

The Kelvin-Helmholtz instability at the magnetospheric boundary plays a crucial role in solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling, particle entry, and energization. The full extent of its impact has remained an open question due, in part, to global models without sufficient resolution to capture waves at higher latitudes. Using global magnetohydrodynamic simulations, we investigate an event when the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission observed periodic low-frequency waves at the dawn-flank, high-latitude boundary layer. We show the layer to be unstable, even though the slow solar wind with the draped interplanetary magnetic field is seemingly unfavorable for wave generation. The simulated velocity shear at the boundary is thin ( ∼ 0.65 R E ) and requires commensurately high spatial resolution. These results, together with MMS observations, confirm for the first time in fully three-dimensional global geometry that KH waves can grow in this region and thus can be an important process for energetic particle acceleration, dynamics, and transport.

Magnetopause ripples going against the flow form azimuthally stationary surface waves

Surface waves process the turbulent disturbances which drive dynamics in many space, astrophysical and laboratory plasma systems, with the outer boundary of Earth’s magnetosphere, the magnetopause, providing an accessible environment to study them. Like waves on water, magnetopause surface waves are thought to travel in the direction of the driving solar wind, hence a paradigm in global magnetospheric dynamics of tailward propagation has been well-established. Here we show through multi-spacecraft observations, global simulations, and analytic theory that the lowest-frequency impulsively-excited magnetopause surface waves, with standing structure along the terrestrial magnetic field, propagate against the flow outside the boundary. Across a wide local time range (09–15h) the waves’ Poynting flux exactly balances the flow’s advective effect, leading to no net energy flux and thus stationary structure across the field also. Further down the equatorial flanks, however, advection dominates hence the waves travel downtail, seeding fluctuations at the resonant frequency which subsequently grow in amplitude via the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability and couple to magnetospheric body waves. This global response, contrary to the accepted paradigm, has implications on radiation belt, ionospheric, and auroral dynamics and potential applications to other dynamical systems.

The magnetopause surface waves (SW) that drive global plasma dynamics are thought, like waves on water, to travel with the driving solar wind. Here, the authors show that impulsively-excited SW, with standing structure along the geomagnetic field, are stationary by propagating against this flow.

Plasmapause surface wave oscillates the magnetosphere and diffuse aurora

Energy circulation in geospace lies at the heart of space weather research. In the inner magnetosphere, the steep plasmapause boundary separates the cold dense plasmasphere, which corotates with the planet, from the hot ring current/plasma sheet outside. Theoretical studies suggested that plasmapause surface waves related to the sharp inhomogeneity exist and act as a source of geomagnetic pulsations, but direct evidence of the waves and their role in magnetospheric dynamics have not yet been detected. Here, we show direct observations of a plasmapause surface wave and its impacts during a geomagnetic storm using multi-satellite and ground-based measurements. The wave oscillates the plasmapause in the afternoon-dusk sector, triggers sawtooth auroral displays, and drives outward-propagating ultra-low frequency waves. We also show that the surface-wave-driven sawtooth auroras occurred in more than 90% of geomagnetic storms during 2014-2018, indicating that they are a systematic and crucial process in driving space energy dissipation.

Jets Downstream of Collisionless Shocks

The magnetosheath flow may take the form of large amplitude, yet spatially localized, transient increases in dynamic pressure, known as "magnetosheath jets" or "plasmoids" among other denominations. Here, we describe the present state of knowledge with respect to such jets, which are a very common phenomenon downstream of the quasi-parallel bow shock. We discuss their properties as determined by satellite observations (based on both case and statistical studies), their occurrence, their relation to solar wind and foreshock conditions, and their interaction with and impact on the magnetosphere. As carriers of plasma and corresponding momentum, energy, and magnetic flux, jets bear some similarities to bursty bulk flows, which they are compared to. Based on our knowledge of jets in the near Earth environment, we discuss the expectations for jets occurring in other planetary and astrophysical environments. We conclude with an outlook, in which a number of open questions are posed and future challenges in jet research are discussed.

Role of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in the evolution of magnetized relativistic sheared plasma flows

We explore, via analytical and numerical methods, the Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instability in relativistic magnetized plasmas, with applications to astrophysical jets. We solve the single-fluid relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (RMHD) equations in conservative form using a scheme which is fourth order in space and time. To recover the primitive RMHD variables, we use a highly accurate, rapidly convergent algorithm which improves upon such schemes as the Newton-Raphson method. Although the exact RMHD equations are marginally stable, numerical discretization renders them unstable. We include numerical viscosity to restore numerical stability. In relativistic flows, diffusion can lead to a mathematical anomaly associated with frame transformations. However, in our KH studies, we remain in the rest frame of the system, and therefore do not encounter this anomaly. We use a two-dimensional slab geometry with periodic boundary conditions in both directions. The initial unperturbed velocity peaks along the central axis and vanishes asymptotically at the transverse boundaries. Remaining unperturbed quantities are uniform, with a flow-aligned unperturbed magnetic field. The early evolution in the nonlinear regime corresponds to the formation of counter-rotating vortices, connected by filaments, which persist in the absence of a magnetic field. A magnetic field inhibits the vortices through a series of stages, namely, field amplification, vortex disruption, turbulent breakdown, and an approach to a flow-aligned equilibrium configuration. Similar stages have been discussed in MHD literature. We examine how and to what extent these stages manifest in RMHD for a set of representative field strengths. To characterize field strength, we define a relativistic extension of the Alfvénic Mach number M(A). We observe close complementarity between flow and magnetic field behavior. Weaker fields exhibit more vortex rotation, magnetic reconnection, jet broadening, and intermediate turbulence. Sufficiently strong fields (M(A)<6) completely suppress vortex formation. Maximum jet deceleration, and viscous dissipation, occur for intermediate vortex-disruptive fields, while electromagnetic energy is maximized for the strongest fields which allow vortex formation. Highly relativistic flows destabilize the system, supporting modes with near-maximum growth at smaller wavelengths than the shear width of the velocity. This helps to explain early numerical breakdown of highly relativistic simulations using numerical viscosity, a long-standing problem. While magnetic fields generally stabilize the system, we have identified many features of the complex and turbulent reorganization that occur for sufficiently weak fields in RMHD flows, and have described the transition from disruptive to stabilizing fields at M(A)≈6. Our results are qualitatively similar to observations of numerous jets, including M87, whose knots may exhibit vortex-like behavior. Furthermore, in both the linear and nonlinear analyses, we have successfully unified the HD, MHD, RHD, and RMHD regimes.