Plasma mixing during active Kelvin-Helmholtz instability at the Earth’s magnetopause under different interplanetary magnetic field configurations

The Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instability is a shear-driven instability commonly observed at the Earth’s magnetopause under different solar wind conditions. The evolution of the KH instability is characterised by the nonlinear coupling of different modes, which tend to generate smaller and smaller vortices along the shear layer. Such a process leads to the conversion of energy due to the large-scale motion of the shear flow into heat contributing to the local heating and the generation of a turbulent environment. On the other hand, it allows the entry of the dense and cold solar wind plasma into the tenuous and hot magnetosphere, thus favoring the mixing of these two different regions.

In this context, we introduce a new quantity, the so-called mixing parameter, which can identify the vortex boundaries and distinguish among different types of KH structures crossed by the spacecraft. The mixing parameter exploits the well distinct particle energies which characterise the magnetosphere and magnetosheath plasmas by using only single-spacecraft measurements [1]. The mixing parameter is therefore used to conduct a statistical analysis of the evolution of KH structures observed by the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission in the near Earth’s environment for two specific interplanetary magnetic field configurations: northward and southward. Moreover, in situ measurements are compared with kinetic KH instability simulations modeling realistic conditions observed by the satellites. The good agreement between synthetic data and in situ observations further strengthen our interpretation of the mixing parameter features and results.

 

[1] Settino, A., et al. (2022) Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 127, e2021JA029758.