TY - JOUR
T1 - Steepening of magnetosonic waves in the inner coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
AU - Ostaszewski, Katharina
AU - Glassmeier, Karl-Heinz
AU - Goetz, Charlotte
AU - Heinisch, Philip
AU - Henri, Pierre
AU - Park, Sang A.
AU - Ranocha, Hendrik
AU - Richter, Ingo
AU - Rubin, Martin
AU - Tsurutani, Bruce
N1 - KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2021-08-13
Acknowledgements: The contribution of the RPC-MAG and ROMAP team was financially supported by the German Ministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie and the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt under contract 50QP1401. Research reported in this publication was supported by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Portions of this research were performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA. Charlotte Goetz was supported by an ESA Research Fellowship. Work at CNRS (LPC2E & Lagrange) is supported by CNES.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - We present a statistical survey of largeamplitude, asymmetric plasma and magnetic field enhancements detected outside the diamagnetic cavity at comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko from December 2014 to June 2016. Based on the concurrent observations of plasma
and magnetic field enhancements, we interpret them to be magnetosonic waves. The aim is to provide a general overview of these waves’ properties over the mission duration. As the first mission of its kind, the ESA Rosetta mission was able to study the plasma properties of the inner coma for a prolonged time and during different stages of activity. This enables us to study the temporal evolution of these waves and
their characteristics. In total, we identified ∼ 70 000 steepened waves in the magnetic field data by means of machine learning. We observe that the occurrence of these steepened waves is linked to the activity of the comet, where steepened waves are primarily observed at high outgassing rates. No clear indications of a relationship between the occurrence rate and solar wind conditions were found. The waves are
found to propagate predominantly perpendicular to the background magnetic field, which indicates their compressional nature. Characteristics like amplitude, skewness, and width of the waves were extracted by fitting a skew normal distribution to the magnetic field magnitude of individual steepened waves. With increasing mass loading, the average amplitude of the waves decreases, while the skewness increases. Using a modified 1D magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model, we investigated if the waves can be described by the combination of nonlinear and dissipative effects. By combining the model with observations of amplitude, width and skewness, we obtain an estimate of the effective plasma diffusivity in the comet–solar wind interaction region and compare it with suitable reference values as a consistency check. At 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, these steepened waves are of particular importance as they dominate the innermost interaction region for intermediate to high activity.
AB - We present a statistical survey of largeamplitude, asymmetric plasma and magnetic field enhancements detected outside the diamagnetic cavity at comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko from December 2014 to June 2016. Based on the concurrent observations of plasma
and magnetic field enhancements, we interpret them to be magnetosonic waves. The aim is to provide a general overview of these waves’ properties over the mission duration. As the first mission of its kind, the ESA Rosetta mission was able to study the plasma properties of the inner coma for a prolonged time and during different stages of activity. This enables us to study the temporal evolution of these waves and
their characteristics. In total, we identified ∼ 70 000 steepened waves in the magnetic field data by means of machine learning. We observe that the occurrence of these steepened waves is linked to the activity of the comet, where steepened waves are primarily observed at high outgassing rates. No clear indications of a relationship between the occurrence rate and solar wind conditions were found. The waves are
found to propagate predominantly perpendicular to the background magnetic field, which indicates their compressional nature. Characteristics like amplitude, skewness, and width of the waves were extracted by fitting a skew normal distribution to the magnetic field magnitude of individual steepened waves. With increasing mass loading, the average amplitude of the waves decreases, while the skewness increases. Using a modified 1D magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model, we investigated if the waves can be described by the combination of nonlinear and dissipative effects. By combining the model with observations of amplitude, width and skewness, we obtain an estimate of the effective plasma diffusivity in the comet–solar wind interaction region and compare it with suitable reference values as a consistency check. At 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, these steepened waves are of particular importance as they dominate the innermost interaction region for intermediate to high activity.
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10754/668217
UR - https://angeo.copernicus.org/preprints/angeo-2020-84/
U2 - 10.5191/angeo-39-721-2021
DO - 10.5191/angeo-39-721-2021
M3 - Article
SN - 1432-0576
VL - 39
SP - 721
EP - 742
JO - Annales Geophysicae
JF - Annales Geophysicae
IS - 4
ER -