A statistical study of magnetic field fluctuations in the dayside magnetosheath and their dependence on upstream solar wind conditions

The magnetosheath functions as a natural interface connecting the interplanetary and magnetospheric plasma. Since the magnetosheath houses the shocked solar wind, it is populated with abundant magnetic field turbulence which are generated both locally and externally. Although the steady state magnetosheath is to date relatively well understood, the same cannot be said of transient magnetic perturbations due to their kinetic nature and often complex and numerous generation mechanisms. The current manuscript presents a statistical study of magnetic field fluctuations in the dayside magnetosheath as a function of upstream solar wind conditions. We concentrate on the ambient higher-frequency fluctuations in the range of 0.1 Hz -> 2 Hz. We show evidence that the dawn (quasi-parallel) flank is visibly prone to higher-amplitude magnetic perturbations compared to the dusk (quasi-perpendicular) region. Our statistical data also suggest that the magnitude of turbulence can be visibly enhanced close to the magnetopause during periods of southward interplanetary magnetic field orientations. Faster (> 400 km s−1) solar wind velocities also appear to drive higher-amplitude perturbations compared to slower speeds. The spatial distribution also suggests some dependence on the magnetic pileup region at the subsolar magnetopause.Peer reviewe

A Possible Link between Turbulence and Plasma Heating

Erratum: A Possible Link between Turbulence and Plasma Heating (Astrophysical Journal (2021) 921 (65) DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac1942). Astrophysical Journal, Volume 923, Issue 2, 20 December 2021, Article number 282.Numerical simulations and experimental results have shown that the formation of current sheets in space plasmas can be associated with enhanced vorticity. Also, in simulations the generation of such structures is associated with strong plasma heating. Here, we compare four-point measurements in the terrestrial magnetosheath turbulence from the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission of the flow vorticity and the magnetic field curlometer versus their corresponding one-point proxies PVI(V) and PVI(B) based on the Partial Variance of Increments (PVI) method. We show that the one-point proxies are sufficiently precise in identifying not only the generic features of the current sheets and vortices statistically, but also their appearance in groups associated with plasma heating. The method has been further applied to the region of the turbulent sheath of an interplanetary coronal mass ejection (ICME) observed at L1 by the WIND spacecraft. We observe current sheets and vorticity associated heating in larger groups (blobs), which so far have not been considered in the literature on turbulent data analysis. The blobs represent extended spatial regions of activity with enhanced regional correlations between the occurrence of conditioned currents and vorticity, which at the same time are also correlated with enhanced temperatures. This heating mechanism is substantially different from the plasma heating in the vicinity of the ICME shock, where plasma beta is strongly fluctuating and there is no vorticity. The proposed method describes a new pathway for linking the plasma heating and plasma turbulence, and it is relevant to in situ observations when only single spacecraft measurements are available.Peer reviewe

Statistical study of the alteration of the magnetic structure of magnetic clouds in the Earth’s magnetosheath

The magnetosheath plays a central role in the solar wind-magnetospheric coupling. Yet the effects of its crossing on solar wind structures such as magnetic clouds (MCs) are generally overlooked when assessing their geoeffectivity. Using 82 MCs observed simultaneously in the solar wind and the magnetosheath, we carry out the first statistical study of the alteration of their magnetic structure in the magnetosheath. For each event, the bow shock properties are obtained from a magnetosheath model. The comparison between the model results and observations shows that in 80% of cases, the MHD-based model captures well the magnetosheath transition; the other events are discussed separately. We find that just downstream of the bow shock the variation of the magnetic field direction shows a very good anticorrelation (r = −0.91) with the angle between the upstream magnetic field and the shock normal. We then focus on the magnetic field north-south component Bz because of its importance for geoeffectivity. Although the sign of Bz is generally preserved in the magnetosheath, we also find evidence of long-lasting intervals of opposite Bz signs in the solar wind and the magnetosheath during some events, with a |Bz| reversal > 10 nT at the magnetopause. We find that these reversals are due to the draping of the field lines and are associated with predominant upstream By. In those cases, the estimated position of the regions of antiparallel fields along the magnetopause is independent of the sign of the upstream Bz . This may have strong implications in terms of reconnection.Peer reviewe

The impact on global magnetohydrodynamic simulations from varying initialisation methods : results from GUMICS-4

We investigate the effects of different initialisation methods of the GUMICS-4 global magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation to the dynamics in different parts of the Earth's magnetosphere and hence compare five 12 h simulation runs that were initiated by 3 h of synthetic data and followed by 9 h of solar wind measurements using the OMNI data as input. As a reference, we use a simulation run that includes nearly 60 h of OMNI data as input prior to the 9 h interval examined with different initialisations. The selected interval is a high-speed stream event during a 10-day interval (12-22 June 2007). The synthetic initialisations include stepwise, linear and sinusoidal functions of the interplanetary magnetic field with constant density and velocity values. The results show that the solutions converge within 1 h to give a good agreement in both the bow shock and the magnetopause position. However, the different initialisation methods lead to local differences which should be taken into consideration when comparing model results to satellite measurements.Peer reviewe

Cloned defective interfering influenza virus protects ferrets from pandemic 2009 influenza A virus and allows protective immunity to be established

Influenza A viruses are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the human population, causing epidemics in the winter, and occasional worldwide pandemics. In addition there are periodic outbreaks in domestic poultry, horses, pigs, dogs, and cats. Infections of domestic birds can be fatal for the birds and their human contacts. Control in man operates through vaccines and antivirals, but both have their limitations. In the search for an alternative treatment we have focussed on defective interfering (DI) influenza A virus. Such a DI virus is superficially indistinguishable from a normal virus but has a large deletion in one of the eight RNAs that make up the viral genome. Antiviral activity resides in the deleted RNA. We have cloned one such highly active DI RNA derived from segment 1 (244 DI virus) and shown earlier that intranasal administration protects mice from lethal disease caused by a number of different influenza A viruses. A more cogent model of human influenza is the ferret. Here we found that intranasal treatment with a single dose of 2 or 0.2 µg 244 RNA delivered as A/PR/8/34 virus particles protected ferrets from disease caused by pandemic virus A/California/04/09 (A/Cal; H1N1). Specifically, 244 DI virus significantly reduced fever, weight loss, respiratory symptoms, and infectious load. 244 DI RNA, the active principle, was amplified in nasal washes following infection with A/Cal, consistent with its amelioration of clinical disease. Animals that were treated with 244 DI RNA cleared infectious and DI viruses without delay. Despite the attenuation of infection and disease by DI virus, ferrets formed high levels of A/Cal-specific serum haemagglutination-inhibiting antibodies and were solidly immune to rechallenge with A/Cal. Together with earlier data from mouse studies, we conclude that 244 DI virus is a highly effective antiviral with activity potentially against all influenza A subtypes

Transmission of an ICME Sheath Into the Earth's Magnetosheath and the Occurrence of Traveling Foreshocks

The transmission of a sheath region driven by an interplanetary coronal mass ejection into the Earth's magnetosheath is studied by investigating in situ magnetic field measurements upstream and downstream of the bow shock during an ICME sheath passage on 15 May 2005. We observe three distinct intervals in the immediate upstream region that included a southward magnetic field component and are traveling foreshocks. These traveling foreshocks were observed in the quasi-parallel bow shock that hosted backstreaming ions and magnetic fluctuations at ultralow frequencies. The intervals constituting traveling foreshocks in the upstream survive transmission to the Earth's magnetosheath, where their magnetic field, and particularly the southward component, was significantly amplified. Our results further suggest that the magnetic field fluctuations embedded in an ICME sheath may survive the transmission if their frequency is below similar to 0.01 Hz. Although one of the identified intervals was coherent, extending across the ICME sheath and being long-lived, predicting ICME sheath magnetic fields that may transmit to the Earth's magnetosheath from the upstream at L1 observations has ambiguity. This can result from the strong spatial variability of the ICME sheath fields in the longitudinal direction, or alternatively from the ICME sheath fields developing substantially within the short time it takes the plasma to propagate from L1 to the bow shock. This study demonstrates the complex interplay ICME sheaths have with the Earth's magnetosphere when passing by the planet.Peer reviewe

Transmission of an ICME Sheath Into the Earth's Magnetosheath and the Occurrence of Traveling Foreshocks

The transmission of a sheath region driven by an interplanetary coronal mass ejection into the Earth's magnetosheath is studied by investigating in situ magnetic field measurements upstream and downstream of the bow shock during an ICME sheath passage on 15 May 2005. We observe three distinct intervals in the immediate upstream region that included a southward magnetic field component and are traveling foreshocks. These traveling foreshocks were observed in the quasi-parallel bow shock that hosted backstreaming ions and magnetic fluctuations at ultralow frequencies. The intervals constituting traveling foreshocks in the upstream survive transmission to the Earth's magnetosheath, where their magnetic field, and particularly the southward component, was significantly amplified. Our results further suggest that the magnetic field fluctuations embedded in an ICME sheath may survive the transmission if their frequency is below similar to 0.01 Hz. Although one of the identified intervals was coherent, extending across the ICME sheath and being long-lived, predicting ICME sheath magnetic fields that may transmit to the Earth's magnetosheath from the upstream at L1 observations has ambiguity. This can result from the strong spatial variability of the ICME sheath fields in the longitudinal direction, or alternatively from the ICME sheath fields developing substantially within the short time it takes the plasma to propagate from L1 to the bow shock. This study demonstrates the complex interplay ICME sheaths have with the Earth's magnetosphere when passing by the planet.Peer reviewe

Asymmetries in the Earth's dayside magnetosheath : results from global hybrid-Vlasov simulations

Bounded by the bow shock and the magnetopause, the magnetosheath forms the interface between solar wind and magnetospheric plasmas and regulates solar wind-magnetosphere coupling. Previous works have revealed pronounced dawn-dusk asymmetries in the magnetosheath properties. The dependence of these asymmetries on the upstream parameters remains however largely unknown. One of the main sources of these asymmetries is the bow shock configuration, which is typically quasi-parallel on the dawn side and quasi-perpendicular on the dusk side of the terrestrial magnetosheath because of the Parker spiral orientation of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) at Earth. Most of these previous studies rely on collections of spacecraft measurements associated with a wide range of upstream conditions which are processed in order to obtain average values of the magnetosheath parameters. In this work, we use a different approach and quantify the magnetosheath asymmetries in global hybrid-Vlasov simulations performed with the Vlasiator model. We concentrate on three parameters: the magnetic field strength, the plasma density, and the flow velocity. We find that the Vlasiator model reproduces the polarity of the asymmetries accurately but that their level tends to be higher than in spacecraft measurements, probably because the magnetosheath parameters are obtained from a single set of upstream conditions in the simulation, making the asymmetries more prominent. A set of three runs with different upstream conditions allows us to investigate for the first time how the asymmetries change when the angle between the IMF and the Sun-Earth line is reduced and when the Alfven Mach number decreases. We find that a more radial IMF results in a stronger magnetic field asymmetry and a larger variability of the magnetosheath density. In contrast, a lower Alfven Mach number leads to a reduced magnetic field asymmetry and a decrease in the variability of the magnetosheath density, the latter likely due to weaker foreshock processes. Our results highlight the strong impact of the quasi-parallel shock and its associated foreshock on global magnetosheath properties, in particular on the magnetosheath density, which is extremely sensitive to transient quasi-parallel shock processes, even with the perfectly steady upstream conditions in our simulations. This could explain the large variability of the density asymmetry levels obtained from spacecraft measurements in previous studies.Peer reviewe

Backstreaming ions at a high Mach number interplanetary shock: Solar Orbiter measurements during the nominal mission phase

Solar Orbiter, a mission developed by the European Space Agency, explores in situ plasma across the inner heliosphere while providing remote-sensing observations of the Sun. Our study examines particle observations for the 30 October 2021 shock. The particles provide clear evidence of ion reflection up to several minutes upstream of the shock. Additionally, the magnetic and electric field observations contain complex electromagnetic structures near the shock, and we aim to investigate how they are connected to ion dynamics. The main goal of this study is to advance our understanding of the complex coupling between particles and the shock structure in high Mach number regimes of interplanetary shocks. We used observations of magnetic and electric fields, probe-spacecraft potential, and thermal and energetic particles to characterize the structure of the shock front and particle dynamics. Furthermore, ion velocity distribution functions were used to study reflected ions and their coupling to the shock. To determine shock parameters and study waves, we used several methods, including cold plasma theory, singular-value decomposition, minimum variance analysis, and shock Rankine-Hugoniot relations. To support the analysis and interpretation of the experimental data, test-particle analysis, and hybrid particle in-cell simulations were used. The ion velocity distribution functions show clear evidence of particle reflection in the form of backstreaming ions several minutes upstream. The shock structure has complex features at the ramp and whistler precursors. The backstreaming ions may be modulated by the complex shock structure, and the whistler waves are likely driven by gyrating ions in the foot. Supra-thermal ions up to 20 keV were observed, but shock-accelerated particles with energies above this were not