SH044-0027
Heliocentric Distance Variation of Interplanetary Field Enhancements

Tuesday, 15 December 2020
Poster
Christopher T Russell1, Hanying Wei2, Hairong Lai3, Timothy Simon Horbury4, Marco C M Velli2, Helen O'Brien5, Vincent Evans6 and Virginia Angelini6, (1)University of California, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (2)University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (3)Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China, (4)Imperial College London, Department of Physics, London, SW7, United Kingdom, (5)Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom, (6)Imperial College London, Department of Physics, London, United Kingdom
Abstract:
Interplanetary Field Enhancement is the name given to a randomly occurring strengthening and rotation of the interplanetary magnetic field. The characteristic signature of the IFE is a rapid change in the strength of the magnetic field to a sharp maximum at which point there is a sudden change in direction of the field. The source of these enhancements has been hypothesized to be the mass-loading of the solar wind associated with collisions of meteors, producing a dust cloud that charges in the solar UV. This charged dust cloud is accelerated to the solar wind speed, at which point the magnetic pressure signature disappears, leaving a twisted magnetic field as the only remaining signature of the interaction. In this paper, we examine how the signature changes with decreasing heliocentric distance and the collisional speed of the impacting meteors increases with proximity to the Sun. Our largest databases are from 1 AU spacecraft such as IMP8, Wind, and STEREO, and Pioneer Venus at 0.72 AU. We compare these records with the more sparse records of missions closer to the Sun, such as Helios and Messenger, as well as Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe, as those data become available.
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