June 4, 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

June 4, 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Measuring and understanding muliscale transients in a turbulent space plasma environment

Vadim Uritsky (Physics and Astronomy Dept , University of Calgary)

Dynamical coupling of planetary magnetospheres with turbulent solar wind provides conditions for a variety of transient multiscale processes such as reconnection-driven fast convective flows, moving plasma ropes, traveling compression regions, propagating dipolarization fronts, localized vortex structures driven by velocity shears, etc. Each of these nonequilibrium events is able to initiate a turbulent energy cascade in the k-space involving both MHD and kinetic domains of plasma behavior making it highly inhomogeneous, anisotropic, and in general non-universal. In this talk, I present a novel framework for investigating transient and/or intermittent aspects of multiscale magnetospheric dynamics, with the emphasis on data analysis recipes for quantitative experimental and theoretical studies. The proposed methodology is illustrated by several examples including magnetic field fluctuations recorded by MESSENGER spacecraft during its first flyby through Mercury’s magnetosphere, in situ and ground multiscale signatures of bursty bulk flows observed by THEMIS, and multiscale transients in plasma simulations.