Foreshock cavities and internal foreshock boundaries

Abstract

We present two case studies of cluster encounters with foreshock cavities. For one event, we are able, for the first time, to accurately relate the observation of a foreshock cavity to the measured position of the bow shock. This allows us to compute the shock angle, a vital parameter in models of foreshock cavity formation, with greater confidence than any previous study. This cavity appears to be elongated along the magnetic field and we use the multispacecraft nature of the Cluster mission to constrain its field-parallel and -perpendicular extent. We show that this event is embedded within a region of field-aligned ion beams. This is the first time a foreshock cavity has been shown to be surrounded by foreshock ion beams. A second foreshock cavity is associated with a small rotation in the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF). We show that this event appears on the boundary between an interval when the spacecraft were inside the ion foreshock, and an excursion upstream. This is the first report of a foreshock cavity observed during the traversal of the global foreshock. This second event has some features expected from the new Sibeck et al. (2008) model of cavities as brief encounters with a spatial boundary in the global foreshock.