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| Titel |
Analysis of thick, non-planar boundaries using the discontinuity analyser |
| VerfasserIn |
M. W. Dunlop, T. I. Woodward |
| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| ISSN |
0992-7689
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| Digitales Dokument |
URL |
| Erschienen |
In: Annales Geophysicae ; 17, no. 8 ; Nr. 17, no. 8, S.984-995 |
| Datensatznummer |
250013794
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 copernicus.org/angeo-17-984-1999.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| The advent of missions comprised of phased
arrays of spacecraft, with separation distances ranging down to at least
mesoscales, provides the scientific community with an opportunity to accurately
analyse the spatial and temporal dependencies of structures in space plasmas.
Exploitation of the multi-point data sets, giving vastly more information than
in previous missions, thereby allows unique study of their small-scale physics.
It remains an outstanding problem, however, to understand in what way
comparative information across spacecraft is best built into any analysis of the
combined data. Different investigations appear to demand different methods of
data co-ordination. Of the various multi-spacecraft data analysis techniques
developed to affect this exploitation, the discontinuity analyser has been
designed to investigate the macroscopic properties (topology and motion) of
boundaries, revealed by multi-spacecraft magnetometer data, where the
possibility of at least mesoscale structure is considered. It has been found
that the analysis of planar structures is more straightforward than the analysis
of non-planar boundaries, where the effects of topology and motion become
interwoven in the data, and we argue here that it becomes necessary to customise
the analysis for non-planar events to the type of structure at hand. One issue
central to the discontinuity analyser, for instance, is the calculation of
normal vectors to the structure. In the case of planar and `thin' non-planar
structures, the method of normal determination is well-defined, although subject
to uncertainties arising from unwanted signatures. In the case of `thick',
non-planar structures, however, the method of determination becomes particularly
sensitive to the type of physical sampling that is present. It is the purpose of
this article to firstly review the discontinuity analyser technique and
secondly, to discuss the analysis of the normals to thick non-planar structures
detected in magnetometer data.
Key words. Space plasma physics (discontinuities;
instruments and techniques) |
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