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A Single‐Point Method to Quantitatively Diagnose the Magnetotail Flapping Motion
Author(s) -
Rong Z. J.,
Zhang C.,
Klinger Lucy,
Shen C.,
Cui J.,
Zhang Y. C.,
Wei Y.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: space physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-9402
pISSN - 2169-9380
DOI - 10.1029/2020ja028200
Subject(s) - flapping , spacecraft , physics , amplitude , magnetic field , point (geometry) , geodesy , computational physics , optics , geology , mathematics , astronomy , geometry , quantum mechanics , wing , thermodynamics
Quantitatively estimating magnetotail flapping motion is critical for understanding and characterizing its dynamical behaviors. Such estimation can be achieved in principle by the multipoint analysis of spacecraft tetrahedron, for example, Cluster or MMS mission, but, owing to the inability of single‐point measurement to separate the spatial‐temporal variation of magnetic field, would be inadequate for a single spacecraft. Since single‐point missions dominate explorations of planetary magnetotail, we have developed a single‐point method based on the magnetic field measurement that quantitatively estimates the parameters of flapping motion, including spatial amplitude, wavelength, and propagation velocity. By comparing several applied cases with the multipoint analysis of Cluster, we demonstrate that our method can be reasonably applied to infer the average parameters over the whole flapping period when magnetotail is during quiet phase (magnetic field in magnetotail does not experience significant temporal variation). Thus, this method could be applied widely to the “big data set” accumulated by single‐point spacecraft missions in order to study magnetotail flapping dynamics.