Planar Structures in the Solar Wind and Their Effect on the Magnetosphere
Date
2019-09-18
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
This thesis is comprised of three studies which all concern implications of planar structuring in the solar wind. The first study presents a statistical comparison of various methods of determining solar wind phase front orientation for use in time-shifting solar wind data from the first Earth-Sun Lagrange point (L1) to the bowshock. It is found that the well known constrained minimum variance (MVAB-0) method is the best performing method for determining phase front orientation. The second study investigates using a 1.5 dimensional magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) numerical model oriented along the average phase front orientation as an alternative to time-shifting. The model is found to perform better than traditional time-shifting during times of sudden solar wind velocity changes. The third and final study investigates the effects of solar wind phase front orientation on magnetospheric activity using information theory. It is found that phase fronts oriented in the average Parker spiral orientation during times when the interplanetary magnetic field points northward (IMF Bz > 0) are more geoeffective than would otherwise be expected.
Description
Keywords
Magnetosphere, Solar Wind, Time-shifting, Plasma Physics, Space Physics
Citation
Cameron, T. G. (2019). Planar Structures in the Solar Wind and Their Effect on the Magnetosphere (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.