- 1University of Murcia, Department of Electromagnetism and Electronics, Murcia, Spain (victor.montagud@um.es)
- 2Space Science and Engineering Division, Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, USA
- 3Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala, Sweden
- 4Department of Electromagnetism and Matter Physics, University of Granada, Granada, 18071, SPAIN
- 5Department of Applied Physics, University of Granada, Granada, 18071, SPAIN
- 6IRTIC Institute, University of Valencia, Paterna, 46980, SPAIN
Plasma inside Earth's magnetosphere can have a substantial effect in the efficiency of magnetic reconnection at the magnetopause, specially if it is rich in cold and heavy ions. We have analyzed 9 years of data gathered by the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission to locate and characterize one magnetospheric plasma population with such features, the warm plasma cloak (WPC). The WPC has an ion temperature that ranges between tens of eV to a few keV and is mainly composed of electrons, protons, and O+ ions. Our statistical study has shown that 51% of MMS observations in the outer magnetosphere correspond to WPC population, and that 15% of the WPC is rich in O+ ions. The presence of heavy ions in the WPC is related to strong geomagnetic activity. We have found that the detections of O+ rich WPC take place 9 hours after geomagnetic events with Kp index larger than 6. The duration of such time gap is in accordance with the prediction of previous models on the formation of the WPC in the dayside magnetosphere.
How to cite: Montagud-Camps, V., Toledo-Redondo, S., Goldstein, J., Fuselier, S., André, M., Albert, I. F., Castilla, A., Salinas, A., Portí, J., and Navarro, E.: O+-rich Warm Plasma Cloak in the Dayside Magnetosphere: Nine Years of MMS Observations., EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-16673, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-16673, 2025.
