SMuK 2023 – scientific programme
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EP: Fachverband Extraterrestrische Physik
EP 1: Planets and small Objects
EP 1.6: Talk
Monday, March 20, 2023, 12:15–12:30, HSZ/0004
Mirror Modes in the Hermean Magnetosheath — •Martin Volwerk1, Charlotte Goetz2, Daniel Heyner3, Tomas Karlsson4, Ferdinand Plaschke3, Daniel Schmid1, and Cyril Simon Wedlund1 — 1Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria — 2Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom — 3Institut für Geophysik und extraterrestrische Physik Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany — 4Space and Plasma Physics School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science KTH Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm. Sweden
Mirror modes are quasi-stationary structures in the plasma frame, consisting of a train of magnetic depressions combined with plasma density enhancements. They are created by a temperature asymmetry in the plasma, where the perpendicular temperature (with respect to the magnetic field) is higher than the parallel temperature. These structures are ubiquitous in planetary magnetosheaths, and have been detected at Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and even at comets. Similar structures to mirror modes are magnetic holes, usually born in the solar wind upstream of the shock and can be transported into the magnetosheath (Karlsson et al., 2021). Here we study magnetic field data during the orbital phase of the MESSENGER mission at Mercury to identify mirror mode-like structures with a magnetic-field-only method. Properties of mirror mode structures will be compared to those of isolated magnetic holes observed in the magnetosheath earlier, to investigate if they are related phenomena