On fast and slow Earth’s magnetospheric dynamics during geomagnetic storms: a stochastic Langevin approach

Abstract

The Earth’s magnetosphere responds to the external changes of interplanetary magnetic field and solar wind conditions showing a multiscale dynamics, manifesting in the occurrence of fluctuations over a very wide range of timescales. Here, using an approach based on a Langevin/Fokker-Planck description we investigate the nature of the fast (short-) and slow (long-timescale) fluctuations of SYM-H index during geomagnetic storms. The results point towards a different origin of the fast (τ < 200 min) and slow (τ > 200 min) fluctuations, which are characterized by state functions of different nature. In detail, the state function associated with the slow dynamics shows the evidence of the occurrence of first-order-like topological phase transition during the different phases of a geomagnetic storm, while the fast dynamics seems to be characterized by a quasi-invariant quadratic state function. A modeling in terms of stochastic Langevin equation is discussed and the relevance of our results in the framework of Space Weather studies is outlined.