An IST Model of the Formation of Magnetic Depressions from Rotationally Asymmetric Fields

Abstract:

Magnetic holes have been observed in the solar wind from 0.3 AU to 17 AU, in the magnetosheath of comet Halley, in the heliosheath and also at high heliocentric latitudes. It has been reported that only about 30% of magnetic holes have a small change in the direction of the magnetic field across them. This case had previously been modeled [DOI: 10.1029/2008JA013582] using the 1D-DNLS equation including the effects of dissipation which showed that any profile with a nonlinear component will inevitably lead to the formation of a train of so-called one-parameter dark solitons with a corresponding decrease in field strength. We report on an extension of this earlier work to the rotationally asymmetric case. The magnetic field structure for ‘solitons’ in this case has not been developed in the literature, but we have found that the direct scattering problem shows the same dynamics as the symmetric case. Connections between these results and magnetic decreases observed in our numerical simulations will be presented.