SM12A-09
Low-Frequency Wave Activity Detected by MMS during Dusk Magnetopause Crossings and its Relation to Heating and Acceleration of Particles
Monday, 14 December 2015: 12:08
2018 (Moscone West)
Olivier Le Contel1, Alain Roux2, Alessandro Retino1, Laurent Mirioni2, Fouad Sahraoui3, Thomas Chust4, Matthieu Berthomier3, Alexandros Chasapis3, Nicolas Aunai2, Paul Leroy2, Dominique Alison2, Benoit Lavraud5, Per-Arne Lindqvist6, Yuri V Khotyaintsev7, Andris Vaivads8, Goran Tage Marklund9, James L Burch10, Roy B Torbert11, Tom Moore12, Robert E Ergun13, Jerry Needell14, Mark Chutter15, David Rau15, Ivan Dors15, John Macri14, Christopher T Russell16, Werner Magnes17, Robert J Strangeway18, Kenneth R Bromund19, Ferdinand Plaschke20, David Fischer20, Hannes Karl Leinweber21, Brian J Anderson22, Rumi Nakamura23, Matthew R Argall11, Guan Le19, James A Slavin24, Larry Kepko19, Wolfgang Baumjohann25, Craig J Pollock26, Barry Mauk27, Stephen A Fuselier10, Katherine Goodrich28 and Frederick D Wilder28, (1)CNRS, Paris Cedex 16, France, (2)Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas (UMR7648), CNRS/Ecole Polytechnique/UPMC/Univ. Paris Sud/Obs. de Paris, Paris, France, (3)Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas, Saint-Maur Des Fossés Cedex, France, (4)Bayerisches Geoinstitut, Universitaet Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany, (5)IRAP, Toulouse, France, (6)KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, (7)IRF Swedish Institute of Space Physics Uppsala, Uppsala, Sweden, (8)Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala, Sweden, (9)Royal Inst Technology, KTH/EES, Stockholm, Sweden, (10)Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, United States, (11)University of New Hampshire Main Campus, Durham, NH, United States, (12)NASA Goddard SFC, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (13)University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, United States, (14)Univ New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States, (15)University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States, (16)University of California Los Angeles, IGPP/EPSS, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (17)Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria, (18)University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (19)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (20)IWF Institute for Space Research, Graz, Austria, (21)Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (22)Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States, (23)Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria, (24)University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, MI, United States, (25)Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria, (26)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Heliophysics Sci. Div., Greenbelt, MD, United States, (27)Applied Physics Laboratory Johns Hopkins, Laurel, MD, United States, (28)University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States
Abstract:
Since the 9th of July, the MMS fleet of four satellites have evolved into a tetrahedral configuration with an average inter-satellite distance of 160 km and an apogee of 12 earth radii on the dusk side. In this study we report on ultra-low (1 mHz to ~10 Hz) and very-low (10 Hz to ~ 4 kHz) frequency wave activity measured by the four satellites during several crossings of the dusk equatorial magnetopause. Since the Larmor radius of magnetosheath protons is of the order of 50 km, this inter-satellite distance allows us to investigate in detail the physics of the magnetopause at proton scales including current structures related to Kelvin-Helmholtz instability as well as other energy transfer processes. From wave polarization analysis, we characterize the different types of emissions and discuss different mechanisms of heating and acceleration of particles. In particular, we focus on the electron heating by kinetic Alfvén waves and lower hybrid waves and the electron acceleration by oblique whistler mode waves, which have been suggested as possible mechanisms from previous Cluster and THEMIS measurements.
