Parametric study of magnetosheath jets: 2D local hybrid simulations.

In this work we perform 2D local hybrid simulations of collisionless shocks in order to study how the properties and formation rates of magnetosheath jets vary as a function of upstream conditions, namely the angle between the shock normal and upstream magnetic field, θ_Bn, and the shock's alfvénic Mach number M_A. We perform fifteen runs with θ_Bn values of 15º, 30º, 45º, 50º and 65º and inflow velocities of 3.3V_A, 4.5V_A, and 5.5V_A (V_A is the Alfvén velocity). The resulting alfvénic Mach number range between 4.3 and 7.7. We use four different criteria in order to identify enhancements in ion density, velocity component in x direction, dynamic pressure calculated with v_x velocity component and ion flux in the downstream regions of simulated shocks. Such criteria have been previously used in observational studies of jets in the magnetosheath of Earth. We find that when using the ion flux criteria with low inflow velocity (V_inf=3.3V_A) and the velocity component in x direction with high inflow velocity (V_inf=5.5V_A) the angle θ_Bn is anticorrelated with the number of jets. In other cases, we find the maximum of jet number between θ_Bn=15º and θ_Bn=50º.