EGU2020-7497, updated on 12 Jun 2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-7497
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Statistical occurrence of mirror mode waves at Mars

Cyril Simon Wedlund1, Martin Volwerk1, Christian Mazelle2, Christian Möstl1, Diana Rojas-Castillo1, Jared Espley3, and Jasper Halekas4
Cyril Simon Wedlund et al.
  • 1Space Research Institute (IWF), Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria (cyril.simon.wedlund@gmail.com)
  • 2Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP), Toulouse, France
  • 3NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Laboratory for Planetary Magnetospheres, Greenbelt, MD, USA
  • 4Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, US

Ultra low-frequency wave activity such as mirror mode (MM) waves, arising from an ion temperature anisotropy in the plasma, has been ubiquitously detected in the magnetosheaths of Venus and Mars. The MM instability is usually triggered behind a quasi-perpendicular bow shock in a high plasma β. We present here a statistical survey of these waves at Mars using magnetometer and ion data from the NASA/MAVEN mission between 2014 and 2019 (solar cycle 24, receding activity). First, quasi-perpendicular bow shock crossings are identified in the data using simple bow shock models (Edberg et al. 2008, Gruesbeck et al. 2018, Hall et al. 2019). MM waves are then automatically detected for these conditions, first from magnetometer measurements only (in the manner of Volwerk et al., 2016), and second using both magnetometer and ion moments to refine the analysis. Maps of MM wave occurrence for solar cycle 24 are presented and preliminary comparisons with similar and different solar activity conditions with MGS and Mars Express data are discussed.

How to cite: Simon Wedlund, C., Volwerk, M., Mazelle, C., Möstl, C., Rojas-Castillo, D., Espley, J., and Halekas, J.: Statistical occurrence of mirror mode waves at Mars, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-7497, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-7497, 2020

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