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Published on: February 13, 2018
Nonlinear development of shocklike structure in the solar wind
1Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA. eslee@ssl.berkeley.edu
Abstract:
We report first in situ multispacecraft observations of nonlinear steepening of compressional pulses in the solar wind upstream of Earth's bow shock. The magnetic field of a compressional pulse formed at the upstream edge of density holes is shown to suddenly break and steepen into a shocklike structure. During the early phase of development thermalization of ions is insignificant. Substantial thermalization of ions occurs as gyrating ions are observed at the steepened edge. These observations indicate that the mechanisms causing the dissipation of magnetic fields (currents) and ions are different in the early phase of shock development.
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