Earth's compressional foreshock boundary revisited: Observations by the ISEE 1 magnetometer

Abstract

We introduce a “solar foreshock coordinate” (SFC) system in which the positions of foreshock components can be collated with a minimum of assumptions about the physical processes involved. Location behind the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) tangent surface to the bow shock and rotational symmetry around the solar wind flow (X) axis are the only presuppositions. We have applied the SFC system to over 300 observations of the boundary of the ULF compressional waves recorded by ISEE 1’s magnetometer in 1978 and 1979. The boundary locations form a coherent pattern in the SFC frame. A selection of those cases for which the cone angle of the IMF was between 40° and 50°, corresponding to the average stream angle, yields a least square line whose mapping back to the solar ecliptic coordinates frame has slope of about 85°, very close to that of the tangent ULF boundary deduced earlier from more primitive methods with entirely different data sets. The line, being parallel to neither the IMF, the typical reflected beam, nor the shock, cannot be compatible with any model of wave production by beam‐solar wind interaction that depends on uniform beam distribution or fixed growth rate. Rather, its tangency suggests the influence of a separate, escaping ion population.