ROSES ID: NNH22ZDA001N-LWS Selection Year: 2022
Program Element: Focused Science Topic
Principal Investigator: Jiang Liu
Affiliation(s): University of California, Los Angeles
Project Member(s):
Pinto Abarzua, Victor Alejandro Collaborator Universidad de Santiago
Liu, Terry Zixu Co-I UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES
Lin, Yu Co-I Auburn University
Hartinger, Michael Co-I University of California, Los Angeles
Summary:
When the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) is approximately parallel to the normal direction of Earth's bow shock, a foreshock forms with many dynamic structures in the upstream solar wind. Foreshock transients are ion kinetic structures commonly observed in the foreshock, characterized by dynamic pressure disturbances. Of these transients, hot flow anomalies (HFAs) and foreshock bubbles (FBs) have the most significant dynamic pressure perturbations. The perturbations can induce oscillations in the bow shock and magnetopause, driving ultra-low frequency (ULF) perturbations in the magnetosphere. During this process, the transients have transferred solar wind energy into the magnetosphere in the form of the perturbations. When foreshock transient disturbances propagate tailward along the magnetopause surface, they can continue inducing perturbations in the magnetosphere. Because ULF perturbations can modulate particle flux non-adiabatically and cause radial diffusion, foreshock transients are potentially important for redistributing the magnetospheric plasma population. This redistribution is key to deciphering magnetic storms and space weather phenomena. Knowledge about the transients' impact on the magnetosphere is crucial for understanding how solar wind energy control magnetospheric processes and increasing the predictive abilities of them. We thus propose to determine whether and how foreshock transients impact the magnetosphere and its plasma population, especially for electrons of the inner magnetosphere. We will investigate the whole chain of the solar wind-magnetosphere coupling related to fore-shock transients: from the significance of the transients' perturbations in the solar wind to how and how much of the perturbations enter the magnetosphere; from whether the perturbations interact with magnetospheric particles in the small scale to whether the particle population varies in the macroscale due to conditions favoring transients-related perturbations. Specifically, we will answer the following questions:_x000D_