Speaker
Description
Interplanetary shocks are generated near the Sun or at distance in the heliosphere in presence of various solar events, such as coronal mass ejections or stream interaction regions, and propagate throughout the solar system. They present a sudden increase of the velocity and are generally followed by a turbulent sheath. Both aspects, the frontal shock and the following turbulent sheath, produce different impacts on the terrestrial magnetosphere, and both have possibly very different geoeffective impacts. Although closely related, these effects are often studied separately.
We propose here to generate in a self-consistent way interplanetary shock events, formed with a shock followed by the turbulent sheath, as it would appear ahead of Earth and then interact with the magnetosphere. At the input of a simulation box, aligned along the Sun-Earth axis, we launch a velocity jump and let it evolve self-consistently. It results into two shocks separated by a turbulent sheath. We show that the leading shock propagates faster than the trailing one, so that the width of turbulent sheath increases in time. We have currently analysed three scenarios based on the angle at which the shock front interacts with the interplanetary magnetic field: the quasi-perpendicular, quasi-parallel and oblique scenarios. We discuss their characteristics which would produce diverse effects on the terrestrial environment.
These preliminary results pave the way to self-consistent simulations of the interaction of solar events with the terrestrial magnetosphere.
