Abstract The paper is concerned with studying the thickness of fronts of 38 interplanetary shocks detected by the BMSW instrument, which is a part of the scientific payload of the SPEKTR-R spacecraft, which was launched into a highly elliptical orbit in 2011. The main parameters of the interplanetary shocks have been calculated as follows: the ratio of thermal pressure to magnetic pressure before the front β, the angle between the shock front normal and the undisturbed magnetic field θBn, the ratio of the shock propagation velocity to the magnetosonic velocity in the undisturbed region Mms, and the shock front velocity relative to the Earth. It has been shown that the front thickness determined from the plasma parameters approximately matches the front thickness obtained from the magnetic field measurements and lies between 0.5 and 5 proton inertial lengths. In some events, the oscillations have been observed (upstream and downstream of the shock) in plasma parameters and in the magnetic field data. The length has been found to be between 0.5 and 6 proton inertial lengths for the preceding oscillations and between 0.5 and 10 proton inertial lengths for the following oscillations. The average value of the proton inertial length is 62 km.
Fine structure of interplanetary shock fronts from the data of the BMSW instrument of the PLASMA-F experiment
Cosmic Research ; 55 , 6 ; 396-402
2017-11-01
7 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
The magnetic field turbulence near interplanetary shock fronts
Elsevier | 1984
|Shock Waves Propagation in the Turbulent Interplanetary Plasma
British Library Conference Proceedings | 1997
|Shock Waves Propagation in the Turbulent Interplanetary Plasma
Online Contents | 1997
|LDEF Interplanetary Dust Experiment (IDE) Results
British Library Conference Proceedings | 1995
|