Micro- to Macro-Scale Dynamics of Earth’s Flank Magnetopause

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Background

The Earth’s flank-side magnetopause is host to diverse physical processes driven as a consequence of the solar wind-magnetosphere coupling. The main processes are the velocity shear driven Kelvin-Helmholtz instability and the magnetic shear driven magnetic reconnection. These processes can lead to the formation of flux transfer events, as well as the excitation of various plasma wave modes and turbulence. These processes can also lead to acceleration, trapping, and the release of energetic particles.

These processes also affect flank magnetopause properties and provide a channel for plasma mixing and two-way transport, i.e., the solar wind/magnetosheath penetrating into the magnetosphere and higher energy magnetospheric particles escaping from the magnetosphere. Properties of these physical processes and the resulting plasma mixing and transport are different between the dawn and dusk magnetopause, as predicted by both the magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) description and kinetic theory, leading to different turbulent status.

These local processes at the flank magnetopause continuously evolve from the dayside magnetopause down to the distant-tail magnetopause. While the electron- or ion-scale physics play an important role in the evolution of these processes, the consequence of the evolution and whole scale sizes of the impact and feedback are macro-scale. For example, the plasma flow and magnetic fluctuations associated with flank dynamics propagate inward deep into the midnight region, influencing global magnetotail dynamics such as controlling the onset of reconnection and driving asymmetries in the central plasma sheet.

The disturbances in the flank magnetopause or boundary layer couples to the high-latitude ionosphere through plasma waves and field-aligned currents at different spatial scales. The velocity shears at the magnetopause boundary can generate large-scale field-aligned currents while the Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices can introduce smaller scale perturbations within the large-scale field-aligned currents. Therefore, investigation of the flank-side dynamics is essential to understanding and predicting the global response of the Earth’s magnetosphere to a variety of external solar wind drivers.

This Research Topic will serve as a reference for the field. We invite both Review papers and Original Research papers using theory/modeling, in-situ, remote-sensing, or ground-based observations that contribute to completing a full picture from the micro-, meso-, to macroscopic contexts of the Earth’s flank magnetopause.

Papers targeting the following topics are welcome:

1. Kelvin-Helmholtz waves and nonlinearly-developed vortices, their coalescence, localized reconnection, and turbulence
2. The effect of the flank-side velocity shear and Kelvin-Helmholtz waves on the plasma sheet or the ionosphere including plasma transport, and wave propagation
3. The coupling of Kelvin-Helmholtz waves to the ionosphere via field-aligned currents
4. The formation or evolution of flux transfer event during the drift from the dayside magnetopause down to the distant-tail magnetopause
5. Interaction of magnetosheath transients and waves, including mirror-mode structures, jets, and low-frequency waves, with the flank magnetopause and its effects
6. Waves and turbulence including particle acceleration and heating, plasma transport and mixing
7. Dawn-dusk asymmetry of the flank-side processes and dynamics
8. Dependence of the flank-side processes/dynamics on the solar wind properties.

Keywords: Magnetopause, Kelvin-Helmholtz wave, Reconnection, Flux transfer event, Magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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