Transport of solar wind into Earth's magnetosphere through rolled-up Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices
Transport of solar wind into Earth's magnetosphere through rolled-up Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices
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DOI：
10.1038/nature02799
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发表时间：
2004-08-12
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
TanDokoro, R
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hasegawa, H;Fujimoto, M;TanDokoro, R
建立太阳风进入地球磁层的机制是磁层物理学的最大目标之一，因为它构成了磁暴和极光等空间天气现象的基础。一般认为，磁场重联是主要的过程，特别是在太阳风和地磁场在低纬磁层顶反平行的太阳风磁场条件下（2）。但是，在北向太阳风磁场条件下，外磁层中的等离子体含量增加（3，4），与预期相反，如果重联占主导地位。在这里，我们表明，在北向太阳风磁场条件下-在低纬度没有活跃的重联-有一个太阳风传输机制与开尔文-亥姆霍兹不稳定性的非线性阶段（5）。这可以为各种空间天气现象提供等离子体源。
Establishing the mechanisms by which the solar wind enters Earth's magnetosphere is one of the biggest goals of magnetospheric physics, as it forms the basis of space weather phenomena such as magnetic storms and aurorae(1). It is generally believed that magnetic reconnection is the dominant process, especially during southward solar-wind magnetic field conditions when the solar-wind and geomagnetic fields are antiparallel at the low-latitude magnetopause(2). But the plasma content in the outer magnetosphere increases during northward solar-wind magnetic field conditions(3,4), contrary to expectation if reconnection is dominant. Here we show that during northward solar-wind magnetic field conditions - in the absence of active reconnection at low latitudes - there is a solar-wind transport mechanism associated with the nonlinear phase of the Kelvin - Helmholtz instability(5). This can supply plasma sources for various space weather phenomena.