STRUCTURE OF THE MAGNETOPAUSE BOUNDARY LAYERS DISCOVERED BYCLUSTER MULTIPOINT OBSERVATIONS

摘要

The Cluster spacecraft, when their separation is of thernorder of thousand km, have provided an opportunity tornunveil details of complex, meso-scale structuresrnembedded in and near the magnetopause. In this paper,rnwe show some examples of how model-based datarnanalyses help us to interpret data obtained by the multipointrnmeasurements. For example, unambiguousrnidentification of highly rolled-up Kelvin-Helmholtzrnvortices at the flank magnetopause, which can be thernagent for efficient transport of solar wind plasmas intornthe magnetosphere, has been made possible with thernhelp of three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamicrnsimulations optimized for the magnetotail flankrnsituations. On the other hand, two-dimensional (2D)rnstructures of the magnetopause and of flux transferrnevents and their time evolution have been revealedrnthanks to the application of Grad-Shafranovrnreconstruction technique, a model-based data analysisrnmethod to produce a 2D map of the magnetic fieldrnaround the spacecraft trajectory, to the Cluster data.