Investigating the Earth's magnetosphere using multi-spacecraft measurements

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The Earth's magnetosphere is a large dynamic structure whose behaviour remains only partially understood despite study over several decades. In the last decade an unprecedented and growing number of space plasma physics research missions has been collecting data in the magnetosphere, including Cluster, THEMIS, VAP, SWARM and MMS, each a multi-spacecraft mission in its own right. Careful planning has gradually brought the orbits of Cluster, MMS and THEMIS in particular into well coordinated alignments, so that the grand constellation has been able to make simultaneous measurements at key locations across the magnetotail in summer seasons, at the bowshock, magnetosheath and magnetopause in winter seasons and along the magnetopause flanks in spring and autumn seasons. Similarly, in all seasons these many spacecraft have regularly collected data throughout the inner magnetosphere.These newly collected data have as yet received limited attention, but the science operations that produced the data were designed to allow investigations of diverse unresolved or only partially resolved questions such as the nature of the process by which the cold, dense plasmasheet is formed, the nature and origin of north/south asymmetries on the magnetotail and of the cusps, the distribution and scale of reconnection sites through the magnetotail plasmasheet and across the magnetopause, the sequence of events in the magnetotail corresponding to auroral substorms, the fate of plasma populations injected into the inner magnetosphere during substorms and their possible contribution to radiation belt population enhancement and loss, and the physical processes at work in the auroral acceleration regions. The supervisor team has prior experience in all these areas.The aim of the project will be to explore the datasets produced in the planned observations seasons associated with one or more of these science goals, and to identify and analyse data from particularly interesting multi-mission, multi-spacecraft conjunctions, in order to shed new light on these long-standing questions. Magnetotail or magnetopause projects would likely be the most productive areas for initial study.