No Arabic abstract
We demonstrate that global observations of high-energy cosmic rays contribute to understanding unique characteristics of a large-scale magnetic flux rope causing a magnetic storm in August 2018. Following a weak interplanetary shock on 25 August 2018, a magnetic flux rope caused an unexpectedly large geomagnetic storm. It is likely that this event became geoeffective because the flux rope was accompanied by a corotating interaction region and compressed by high-speed solar wind following the flux rope. In fact, a Forbush decrease was observed in cosmic-ray data inside the flux rope as expected, and a significant cosmic-ray density increase exceeding the unmodulated level before the shock was also observed near the trailing edge of the flux rope. The cosmic-ray density increase can be interpreted in terms of the adiabatic heating of cosmic rays near the trailing edge of the flux rope, as the corotating interaction region prevents free expansion of the flux rope and results in the compression near the trailing edge. A northeast-directed spatial gradient in the cosmic-ray density was also derived during the cosmic-ray density increase, suggesting that the center of the heating near the trailing edge is located northeast of Earth. This is one of the best examples demonstrating that the observation of high-energy cosmic rays provides us with information that can only be derived from the cosmic ray measurements to observationally constrain the three-dimensional macroscopic picture of the interaction between coronal mass ejections and the ambient solar wind, which is essential for prediction of large magnetic storms.
Cosmic rays are charged particles whose flux observed at Earth shows temporal variations related to space weather phenomena and may be an important tool to study them. The cosmic ray intensity recorded with ground-based detectors also shows temporal variations arising from atmospheric variations. In the case of muon detectors, the main atmospheric effects are related to pressure and temperature changes. In this work, we analyze both effects using data recorded by the Global Muon Detector Network (GMDN), consisting of four multidirectional muon detectors at different locations, in the period between 2007 and 2016. For each GMDN directional channel, we obtain coefficients that describe the pressure and temperature effects. We then analyze how these coefficients can be related to the geomagnetic cutoff rigidity and zenith angle associated with cosmic-ray particles observed by each channel. In the pressure effect analysis, we found that the observed barometric coefficients show a very clear logarithmic correlation with the cutoff rigidity divided by the zenith angle cosine. On the other hand, the temperature coefficients show a good logarithmic correlation with the product of the cutoff and zenith angle cosine after adding a term proportional to the sine of geographical latitude of the observation site. This additional term implies that the temperature effect measured in the northern hemisphere detectors is stronger than that observed in the southern hemisphere. The physical origin of this term and of the good correlations found in this analysis should be studied in detail in future works.
Using multipoint Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) observations in an unusual string-of-pearls configuration, we examine in detail observations of the reformation of a fast magnetosonic shock observed on the upstream edge of a foreshock transient structure upstream of Earths bow shock. The four MMS spacecraft were separated by several hundred km, comparable to suprathermal ion gyro-radius scales or several ion inertial lengths. At least half of the shock reformation cycle was observed, with a new shock ramp rising up out of the foot region of the original shock ramp. Using the multipoint observations, we convert the observed time-series data into distance along the shock normal in the shocks rest frame. That conversion allows for a unique study of the relative spatial scales of the shocks various features, including the shocks growth rate, and how they evolve during the reformation cycle. Analysis indicates that: the growth rate increases during reformation, electron-scale physics play an important role in the shock reformation, and energy conversion processes also undergo the same cyclical periodicity as reformation. Strong, thin electron-kinetic-scale current sheets and large-amplitude electrostatic and electromagnetic waves are reported. Results highlight the critical cross-scale coupling between electron-kinetic- and ion-kinetic-scale processes and details of the nature of nonstationarity, shock-front reformation at collisionless, fast magnetosonic shocks.
Recent observations in the quasi-parallel bow shock by the MMS spacecraft show rapid heating and acceleration of ions up to an energy of about 100 keV. It is demonstrated that a prominent acceleration mechanism is the nonlinear interaction with a spectrum of waves produced by gradient driven instabilities, including the lower hybrid drift (LHD) instability, modified two-stream (MTS) instability and electron cyclotron drift (ECD) instability. Test-particle simulations show that the observed spectrum of waves can rapidly accelerate protons up to a few hundreds keV by the ExB mechanism. The ExB wave mechanism is related to the surfatron mechanism at shocks but through the coupling with the stochastic heating condition it produces significant acceleration on much shorter temporal and spatial scales by the interaction with bursts of waves within a cyclotron period. The results of this paper are built on the heritage of four-point measurement techniques developed for the Cluster mission and imply that the concepts of Fermi acceleration, diffusive shock acceleration, and shock drift acceleration are not needed to explain proton acceleration to hundreds keV at the Earths bow shock.
Protons detected by the PAMELA experiment in the period 2006-2014 have been analyzed in the energy range between 0.40-50 GV to explore possible periodicities besides the well known solar undecennial modulation. An unexpected clear and regular feature has been found at rigidities below 15 GV, with a quasi-periodicity of $sim$450 days. A possible Jovian origin of this periodicity has been investigated in different ways. The results seem to favor a small but not negligible contribution to cosmic rays from the Jovian magnetosphere, even if other explanations cannot be excluded.
We present a study of the acceleration efficiency of suprathermal electrons at collisionless shock waves driven by interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs), with the data analysis from both the spacecraft observations and test-particle simulations. The observations are from the 3DP/EESA instrument onboard emph{Wind} during the 74 shock events listed in Yang et al. 2019, ApJ, and the test-particle simulations are carried out through 315 cases with different shock parameters. It is shown that a large shock-normal angle, upstream Alfv$acute{text e}$n Mach number, and shock compression ratio would enhance the shock acceleration efficiency. In addition, we develop a theoretical model of the critical shock normal angle for efficient shock acceleration by assuming the shock drift acceleration to be efficient. We also obtain models for the critical values of Mach number and compression ratio with efficient shock acceleration, based on the suggestion of Drury 1983 about the average momentum change of particle crossing of shock. It is shown that the theories have similar trends of the observations and simulations. Therefore, our results suggest that the shock drift acceleration is efficient in the electron acceleration by ICME-driven shocks, which confirms the findings of Yang et al.