Plasma sheet response of the Earthââ‚₀â„¢s magnetosphere to interplanetary shock

Abstract:

In this paper, we investigate the global response of magnetosphere to interplanetary shock, and focus on the magnetic and plasma variations related to aurora. The analysis utilizes data from simultaneous observations of interplanetary shocks from available spacecraft in the solar wind and the Earth’s magnetosphere such as ACE, Wind and SOHO in solar wind, LANL and GOES in outer magnetosphere, TC1 in the midinight neutral plasma sheet, Geotail and Polar in dusk side of plasma sheet, and Cluster in downside LLBL. The shock front speed is ~1051 km/s in the solar wind, and ~981km/s in the Earth’s magnetosphere. The shock is propagating anti-sunward (toward the Earth) in the plasma frame with a speed of ~320 km/s. After the shock bumps at the magnetopause, the dayside aurora brightens, then nightside aurora brightens and expanses to poleward. During the aurora activity period, the fast earthward and tailward flows in plasma sheet are observed by TC1 (X~7.1 Re, Y~1.2 Re). The variation of magnetic field and plasma in duskside of magnetosphere is weaker than that in dawnside. At low latitude boundary layer (LLBL), the Cluster spacecraft detected rolled-up large scale vortices generated by the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI). Toroidal oscillations of the magnetic field in the LLBL might be driven by the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. The strong IP shock highly compresses the magnetopause and the outer magnetosphere. This process may also lead to particle precipitation and auroral brightening (Zhou and Tsurutani, 1999; Tsurutani et al., 2001 and 2003).