Mass-loading, pile-up, and mirror-mode waves at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
- Creators
- Volwerk, M.
- Tsurutani, B.
Abstract
The data from all Rosetta plasma consortium instruments and from the ROSINA COPS instrument are used to study the interaction of the solar wind with the outgassing cometary nucleus of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. During 6 and 7 June 2015, the interaction was first dominated by an increase in the solar wind dynamic pressure, caused by a higher solar wind ion density. This pressure compressed the draped magnetic field around the comet, and the increase in solar wind electrons enhanced the ionization of the outflow gas through collisional ionization. The new ions are picked up by the solar wind magnetic field, and create a ring/ring-beam distribution, which, in a high-β plasma, is unstable for mirror mode wave generation. Two different kinds of mirror modes are observed: one of small size generated by locally ionized water and one of large size generated by ionization and pick-up farther away from the comet.
Additional Information
© 2016 Author(s). This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. Received: 16 October 2015 – Revised: 1 December 2015 – Accepted: 6 December 2015 – Published: 15 January 2016. Rosetta is an ESA mission with contributions from its Member States and NASA. We acknowledge the staff of CDDP and IC for the use of AMDA and the RPC Quicklook database (provided by a collaboration between the Centre de Données de la Physique des Plasmas, supported by CNRS, CNES, Observatoire de Paris and Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse and Imperial College London, supported by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council). The work of K.-H. Glassmeier, I. Richter and C. Koenders was financially supported by the German Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie and the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt under contract 50 QP 1401 for Rosetta. C. Carr and E. Cupido thank the UK space agency for support of the Imperial College RPC team. T. Broiles, J. Burch and K. Mandt acknowledge support by NASA for work on IES through contract #1345493 with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. N. J. T. Edberg acknowledges support from the Swedish National Space Board and the Swedish Research Council. A. Opitz and M. Dósa are grateful to Z. Neth for the deep discussions and L. Földy for his computational support. The authors acknowledge the ACE and OMNI databases for solar wind data.Attached Files
Published - angeo-34-1-2016.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 66557
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20160429-142813366
- Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie (BMWi)
- 50 QP 1401
- Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR)
- 1345493
- NASA/JPL
- Swedish National Space Board (SNSB)
- Swedish Research Council
- United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA)
- Created
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2016-05-02Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field