Spatial Scales of Collisionless Shock Ramps Observed covasanvictor@gmail.

com
byDepartment
MMS
Victor Covasan , Homayon Aryan , Michael Balikhin , Simon Walker
1 2 2 2
linkedin.com/in/victorios
Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Sheffield,
1
of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, University of Sheffield
2 Poster ID: SH23B-3380

Introduction
Methodology
When a highly supersonic flow such as the Solar Wind encounters an obstacle like Earth’s
Using the Fluxgate data from the four MMS satellites, the shocks were
Magnetosphere, the interface between the two becomes a region abundant in collisionless
identified, the normal determined using mainly minimum variance analysis
shocks. The dynamics of shock formation are not thoroughly understood, therefore models
or the model normal subsequent to low pass filtering. The shock velocity
based on in-situ measurements are constantly required to was calculated using the inter spacecraft separations and the time shifts
validate the results from simulations and numerical methods. between each pair and cases where very small separations were found to
The spatial size of the ramp is a reliable indicator of the extent lead to unphysical results have been excluded. Additionally, situations where
to which dissipation or dispersion prevent nonlinear the shock velocity vector was found to be perpendicular to the separation
steepening at the shock front. As a result, the ramp scales can vector were also excluded. Using the shock velocity and temporal size of the
be used to infer valuable information about the degree of ion shock, the spatial
reflection, electron thermalization, proton acceleration etc. size of the global ramp was then
The aim of the current study is to determine such a 2018-01-08 calculated and normalized to the
relationship between the spatial scales of collisionless shocks Figure 1: Quasiperpendicular Shock
observed by there MMS satellites electron and ion inertial lengths.
and their respective Alfven Mach numbers, as observed from Finally, the Mach number
the time series data recorded by the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission. was calculated using the bulk velocity
and particle densities measured by
Fast Plasma Instrument suite.
The entire analysis procedure is
MMS Advantages illustrated in the adjacent flowchart.
Due to the exceedingly dynamic nature of A typical collisionless shock
2018-01-08

shock transition, high enough sampling recognized from the FGM data is
Figure 5: Shock Frame Decomposition
rates of the onboard instruments are shown in Figure 5, where a Mach Obtained using Minimum Variance Analysis

necessary to capture the substructure of number of 6.26 in an ambient

the shock and give insight into the magnetic field of 5.66nT corresponds to a ramp size of 3.66km.
processes taking place during steepening.
Additionally, small inter-spacecraft
separations are required to ensure that the
shock characteristics are not significantly
Results and Conclusions
altered by the time it is observed by the
The results have been compiled into the scatterplot shown in Figure 6, which
next spacecraft. Both aspects are satisfied Figure 3: Comparison between the
Figure 3: Typical Tetrahedron orbits of different multispacecraft reveals a strong dependence of the spatial scales on the Alfven Mach number.
Configuration by MMS withunprecedented performance. missions
As it can be noticed, for low
Ma the ramp scale is the order of the
ion inertial scale. As the flow
Data Sets becomes highly superalfvenic, the
Data collected between the 4th of October increase in Ma leads to the ramp scale
2017 and the 13th of June 2019 was approaching a few electron inertial
analyzed, leading to 88 shocks being lengths. These conclusions point to
identified. The position and magnetometer the dispersive nature of the processes
measurements were retrieved from the contributing to the dissipation of the
FIELDS data package while the bulk flow incident solar wind in that region and Figure 6: Scatterplot Illustrating the Dependence on the Ramp
Scale with Increasing Mach Number for the 88 Shocks Analyzed
and particle densities are part of the Fast balancing nonlinearity
Plasma Instrument(FPI) suite. The in the substructure.
magnetic field data was sampled using the
Analog Flux-Gates due to consistent low
noise levels at a sampling rates of 10 or
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the MMS Science Team for providing the data used in this study as well as to the University
16Hz. The latter was produced by the of Sheffield for supporting the project through the grant and services provided as part of the Summer Undergraduate
Research Experience program. M.A.B. prompted the motivation for the study and provided invaluable comments on the
DIS/DES spectrometers at a resolution of interpretation of the data. H.A. coordinated the overall project and contributed to the production of the manuscript text. V.C.
150ms for ions and 30ms for electrons. analyzed the data and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. S.W provided tools and materials for further processing of the
MMS data. Additional thanks are extended to V. Angelopoulos and Eric Grimes for developing the SPEDAS framework and
Figure 4: Typical FIELDS and FPI Data Samples
the Python/IDL libraries accompanying it and to the members of the Swedish Institute of Space Physics for developing the
IRFU-MATLAB package open source.