학술논문
Earth's Alfv\'en wings driven by the April 2023 Coronal Mass Ejection
Document Type
Working Paper
Author
Chen, Li-Jen; Gershman, Daniel; Burkholder, Brandon; Chen, Yuxi; Sarantos, Menelaos; Jian, Lan; Drake, James; Dong, Chuanfei; Gurram, Harsha; Shuster, Jason; Graham, Daniel; Contel, Olivier Le; Schwartz, Steven; Fuselier, Stephen; Madanian, Hadi; Pollock, Craig; Liang, Haoming; Argall, Matthew; Denton, Richard; Rice, Rachel; Beedle, Jason; Genestreti, Kevin; Ardakani, Akhtar; Stanier, Adam; Le, Ari; Ng, Jonathan; Bessho, Naoki; Pandya, Megha; Wilder, Frederick; Gabrieles, Christine; Cohen, Ian; Wei, Hanying; Russell, Christopher T.; Ergun, Robert; Torbert, Roy; Burch, James
Source
Subject
Language
Abstract
We report a rare regime of Earth's magnetosphere interaction with sub-Alfv\'enic solar wind in which the windsock-like magnetosphere transforms into one with Alfv\'en wings. In the magnetic cloud of a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) on April 24, 2023, NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale mission distinguishes the following features: (1) unshocked and accelerated cold CME plasma coming directly against Earth's dayside magnetosphere; (2) dynamical wing filaments representing new channels of magnetic connection between the magnetosphere and foot points of the Sun's erupted flux rope; (3) cold CME ions observed with energized counter-streaming electrons, evidence of CME plasma captured due to reconnection between magnetic-cloud and Alfv\'en-wing field lines. The reported measurements advance our knowledge of CME interaction with planetary magnetospheres, and open new opportunities to understand how sub-Alfv\'enic plasma flows impact astrophysical bodies such as Mercury, moons of Jupiter, and exoplanets close to their host stars.
Comment: 14 pages, including 4 figures, Under review in Geophys. Res. Lett
Comment: 14 pages, including 4 figures, Under review in Geophys. Res. Lett