Speaker
Description
The solar wind is a complex and dynamic plasma environment, populated by a variety of structures. Among these we find Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), interplanetary shocks, Corotating Interaction Regions (CIRs) and large-amplitude non-linear deflections of the magnetic field called switchbacks. They have been shown by Parker Solar Probe to be ubiquitous (Bale et al. 2019). These switchbacks, often grouped in extended intervals called patches, are thought to be linked to interchange magnetic reconnection in the low corona and may imprint distinct signatures in the ion Distribution Functions (DFs), for instance through variations in alpha particle abundance or temperature anisotropies.
To investigate these signatures down to kinetic-scales, we have developed a new algorithm for analyzing the 3D ion DFs measured by the Proton-Alpha Sensor (PAS) onboard Solar Orbiter. With its unique time resolution from 1 to 4 seconds (Louarn et al. 2020), PAS enables detailed probing of proton and alpha populations. Our method extracts these populations directly from the energy spectra with Gaussian Mixture Models and computes their moments (density, bulk velocity, temperature anisotropy) in the magnetic field-aligned frame.
This approach will be used to study the kinetic properties of ions within switchbacks and patches, in order to better understand their origin and evolution. It will also be applied to other solar wind structures such as CMEs, shocks, and CIRs, which will serve as additional test cases to benchmark the algorithm and evaluate its performance across diverse plasma environments.
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