Compressional boundaries in the Earth's foreshock

Journal Article · Thu Jun 13 04:00:00 EDT 2013 · AIP Conference Proceedings

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4811078· OSTI ID:22118617

Rojas-Castillo, D.; Blanco-Cano, X. ^[1]; Kajdic, P. ^[2]; Omidi, N. ^[3]

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1. Instituto de Geofisica, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Coyoacan (Mexico)
2. Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie, Toulouse (France)
3. Solana Scientific Inc., Solana Beach, California (United States)

The terrestrial foreshock is a highly dynamic region populated by particles, waves and non-linear structures such as shocklets, SLAMS, hot flow anomalies, cavities and cavitons. Recently a new structure named foreshock compressional boundary (FCB) was reported in global hybrid simulations by Omidi et al. (2009). This structure represents a transition region that separates the highly disturbed foreshock plasma from pristine solar wind or from the region of field-aligned ion beams. The FCB is associated with a strong compression of magnetic field and density. Besides the enhancements in the field and density, the FCB also shows a region where these two quantities decrease below the ambient solar wind (SW) values. Here, we study a FCB observed by Cluster-1. This FCB shows that although sometimes FCBs are transition regions between the pristine solar wind plasma and the foreshock plasma, in this case the FCB separates a region with large amplitude waves from regions with high frequency (f{approx}1.7 Hz) small amplitude waves. We analyze the FCB properties, ion distributions inside them, and the waves near the structure.

• OSTI ID: 22118617
• Journal Information: AIP Conference Proceedings, Journal Name: AIP Conference Proceedings Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 1539; ISSN APCPCS; ISSN 0094-243X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
ASTROPHYSICS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
DENSITY
EARTH MAGNETOSPHERE
FORESHOCKS
ION BEAMS
MAGNETIC FIELDS
NONLINEAR PROBLEMS
PLASMA
PLASMA WAVES
SHOCK WAVES
SOLAR WIND