Outer Magnetospheric Boundaries: Cluster Results
Abstract
When the stream of plasma emitted from the Sun (the solar wind) encounters Earth's magnetic field, it slows down and flows around it, leaving behind a cavity, the magnetosphere. The magnetopause is the surface that separates the solar wind on the outside from the Earth's magnetic field on the inside. Because the solar wind moves at supersonic speed, a bow shock must form ahead of the magnetopause that acts to slow the solar wind to subsonic speeds. Magnetopause, bow shock and their environs are rich in exciting processes in collisionless plasmas, such as shock formation, magnetic reconnection, particle acceleration and wave-particle interactions.
- Publication:
-
Outer Magnetospheric Boundaries: Cluster Results
- Pub Date:
- 2005
- DOI:
- 10.1007/1-4020-4582-4
- Bibcode:
- 2005ombc.book.....P