Identification of configuration and boundaries of interplanetary magnetic clouds

摘要

To study interplanetary magnetic clouds (IMCs), it is important to find their configurations and boundaries from the observed magnetic field data. This paper presents a novel method of identifying the configuration and boundaries of IMCs, wherein the interplanetary magnetic field data, which are measured in the Geocentric Solar Ecliptic (GSE) coordinate system, are converted into an IMC natural coordinate system that can more clearly display the configuration and boundaries of the IMC as a flux tube. The establishment of the natural coordinate system is based on the idea that the IMC is a flux rope with approximately constant α force-free field configuration. We also apply this method to analyze four IMCs observed by the Wind spacecraft. Two of them are identified as having the flux rope configuration lying in the ecliptic plane, and the other two are flux ropes vertical to the ecliptic plane. The results demonstrate that our method can work well for real IMCs.