The solar wind angular-momentum flux observed during Solar Orbiter's first orbit

Daniel Verscharen; David Stansby; Adam Finley; Christopher Owen; Timothy Horbury; Marco Velli; Stuart Bale; Philippe Louarn; Andrei Fedorov; Roberto Bruno; Stefano Livi; Gethyn Lewis; Chandrasekhar Anekallu; Christopher Kelly; Gillian Watson; Dhiren Kataria; Helen O'Brien; Vincent Evans; Virginia Angelini

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6306

[Back] [Session ST1.3]

EGU21-6306

https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6306

EGU General Assembly 2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

The solar wind angular-momentum flux observed during Solar Orbiter's first orbit

Daniel Verscharen^1,2, David Stansby¹, Adam Finley³, Christopher Owen¹, Timothy Horbury⁴, Marco Velli⁵, Stuart Bale^4,6,7, Philippe Louarn⁸, Andrei Fedorov⁸, Roberto Bruno⁹, Stefano Livi¹⁰, Gethyn Lewis¹, Chandrasekhar Anekallu¹, Christopher Kelly¹, Gillian Watson¹, Dhiren Kataria¹, Helen O'Brien⁴, Vincent Evans⁴, and Virginia Angelini⁴

Daniel Verscharen et al.

¹Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, Dorking, United Kingdom (d.verscharen@ucl.ac.uk)
²Space Science Center, University of New Hampshire, Durham NH, United States
³DRF/IRFU/DAp/LDE3, CEA Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
⁴Department of Physics, The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
⁵Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA , United States
⁶Space Sciences Laboratory and Physics Department, University of California, Berkeley CA, United States
⁷School of Physics and Astronomy, Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom
⁸Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, Toulouse, France
⁹INAF-Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali, Roma, Italy
¹⁰Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio TX, United States

The Solar Orbiter mission is currently in its cruise phase, during which the spacecraft's in-situ instrumentation measures the solar wind and the electromagnetic fields at different heliocentric distances.

We evaluate the solar wind angular-momentum flux by combining proton data from the Solar Wind Analyser (SWA) Proton-Alpha Sensor (PAS) and magnetic-field data from the Magnetometer (MAG) instruments on board Solar Orbiter during its first orbit. This allows us to evaluate the angular momentum in the protons in addition to that stored in magnetic-field stresses, and compare these to previous observations from other spacecraft. We discuss the statistical properties of the angular-momentum flux and its dependence on solar-wind properties.

Our results largely agree with previous measurements of the solar wind’s angular-momentum flux in the inner heliosphere and demonstrate the potential for future detailed studies of large-scale properties of the solar wind with the data from Solar Orbiter.

How to cite: Verscharen, D., Stansby, D., Finley, A., Owen, C., Horbury, T., Velli, M., Bale, S., Louarn, P., Fedorov, A., Bruno, R., Livi, S., Lewis, G., Anekallu, C., Kelly, C., Watson, G., Kataria, D., O'Brien, H., Evans, V., and Angelini, V.: The solar wind angular-momentum flux observed during Solar Orbiter's first orbit, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-6306, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6306, 2021.

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