Magnetopause ripples going against the flow form azimuthally stationary surface waves
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Archer, Martin
Hartinger, Michael
Plaschke, Ferdinand
Southwood, David
Rastaetter, Lutz
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Surface waves process the turbulent disturbances which drive dynamics in many space, astrophysical and laboratory plasma systems, with the outer boundary of Earth’s magnetosphere, the magnetopause, providing an accessible environment to study them. Like waves on water, magnetopause surface waves are thought to travel in the direction of the driving solar wind, hence a paradigm in global magnetospheric dynamics of tailward propagation has been well-established. Here we show through multi-spacecraft observations, global simulations, and analytic theory that the lowest-frequency impulsively-excited magnetopause surface waves, with standing structure along the terrestrial magnetic field, propagate against the flow outside the boundary. Across a wide local time range (09–15h) the waves’ Poynting flux exactly balances the flow’s advective effect, leading to no net energy flux and thus stationary structure across the field also. Further down the equatorial flanks, however, advection dominates hence the waves travel downtail, seeding fluctuations at the resonant frequency which subsequently grow in amplitude via the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability and couple to magnetospheric body waves. This global response, contrary to the accepted paradigm, has implications on radiation belt, ionospheric, and auroral dynamics and potential applications to other dynamical systems.
Date Issued
2021-10-06
Date Acceptance
2021-08-30
Citation
Nature Communications, 2021, 12 (5697), pp.1-14
ISSN
2041-1723
Publisher
Nature Research
Start Page
1
End Page
14
Journal / Book Title
Nature Communications
Volume
12
Issue
5697
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2021
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Sponsor
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC)
UKRI
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Identifier
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25923-7
Grant Number
EP/T01735X/1
EP/T01735X/1
ST/S000364/1
ST/N000692/1
Subjects
physics.space-ph
physics.space-ph
astro-ph.EP
physics.flu-dyn
physics.plasm-ph
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2021-10-06