Statistics of geometrical invariants of magnetic field gradient tensors in the turbulent magnetosheath based on magnetospheric multiscale mission

Abstract

Geometrical invariants of magnetic field gradient tensors are used to classify the topological structures of a magnetic field. This study presents a statistical analysis on the geometrical invariants of magnetic field gradient based on high-quality data measured by magnetospheric multiscale mission in turbulent magnetosheath. The method for the classification of velocity field topologies cannot be applied to magnetic field with strong intensity directly because the magnetic field cannot be transformed to zero by selecting a co-moving reference frame in which the velocity is zero. During a strong magnetic field, flux ropes and tubes are the most possible magnetic structures. Statistics in the plane formed by geometrical invariants show that about 23% are force-free structures comprised of 20.5% flux tubes and 79.5% flux ropes. The remaining actively evolved structures are comprised of 30% flux tubes and 70% flux ropes. Moreover, the conditional average of current density and Lorentz force decomposition in geometrical invariants plane are investigated. The results show that flux ropes carried more current density than flux tubes for the same geometrical invariants, and flux ropes tend to associate with magnetic pressure force and flux tubes tend to associate with magnetic tension.