Physics Commons^™

More About Arc-Polarized Structures In The Solar Wind, S A. Haaland, B Sonnerup, G Paschmann

Dartmouth Scholarship

We report results from a Cluster-based study of the properties of 28 arc-polarized magnetic structures (also called rotational discontinuities) in the solar wind. These Alfve ́nic events were selected from the database created and analyzed by Knetter (2005) by use of criteria chosen to elim- inate ambiguous cases. His studies showed that standard, four-spacecraft timing analysis in most cases lacks sufficient accuracy to identify the small normal magnetic field compo- nents expected to accompany such structures, leaving unan- swered the question of their existence. Our study aims to break this impasse. By careful application of minimum vari- ance analysis of …