Plasma and Magnetic-Field Characteristics of Magnetic Decreases in the Solar Wind at 1 AU: Cluster-C1 Observations

Abstract

Magnetic decreases (MDs) are structures observed in interplanetary space with significant decreases in magnetic-field magnitude. Events with little or no change in the field direction are called linear magnetic decreases (LMDs), the others are called nonlinear MDs (NMDs). In this article we focus on LMD and NMD trains, where LMD trains are defined as at least three LMDs in a row and NMD trains as trains (≥ three MDs in a row) that are not all linear. If the temporal separation between two MDs was shorter than five minutes, they were considered as one train event. A total of 16 273 MD trains (including 897 LMD trains and 15 376 NMD trains) were identified and studied. The details of the background magnetic-field and plasma (e.g. ion-density and velocity) features were examined and compared with the average solar-wind properties. LMD trains are found to occur in regions with relatively low magnetic-field strengths, high ion-number densities, and large plasma βs (ratio of the plasma thermal pressure to the magnetic pressure). In sharp contrast, NMD trains have plasma properties similar to the average solar wind. Forty-three LMD trains are related to interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) (including 19 events that occurred in ICME sheaths and 24 in the ICME proper), while 222 LMD trains occurred in corotating interaction regions (CIRs), and the remaining 632 events in the normal solar wind. The LMD trains that occurred in ICME sheaths are thought to be associated with the generation mechanism of the mirror-mode instability. Only 552 of the NMD trains are related to ICMEs (including 236 events in ICME sheaths and 316 in ICMEs proper), while 3889 (25 %) NMD trains occurred in CIRs, and the remaining 71 % occurred in the normal solar wind. Because the NMD trains have various plasma properties that differ from the LMD trains, we suggest that NMD trains may be generated by different mechanisms, for instance by a steepening of Alfven waves.