[IGPP Everyone] NOW: Space Physics Seminar Friday 3/4 3:30pm - Shocking stuff: MMS targets for electron processes at the Earth’s Bow Shock (S. Schwartz, Imperial College London)

[Emmanuel V. Masongsong]

SPACE PHYSICS SEMINAR 

DEPARTMENT OF EARTH, PLANETARY, AND SPACE SCIENCES 

DEPARTMENT OF ATMOSPHERIC AND OCEANIC SCIENCES 

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES 

(EPSS M288A, AOS M275A) 







Stephen Schwartz 

Imperial College London 

currently Leverhulme Research Fellow 

on sabbatical at LASP, CU Boulder 



Shocking stuff: MMS targets for electron processes at the Earth’s Bow Shock 



Despite four decades of in situ study of the Earth’s bow shock, and collisionless shocks elsewhere within the interplanetary medium, there is still no quantitative explanation for the way the incident bulk flow energy is divided amongst electrons, thermal protons and other ions, energetic particles, and electromagnetic Poynting flux. In physical terms, although the total shock energetics can be calculated, the equation of state necessary to describe the internal processes does not exist. Statistically, the relative electron heating decreases as the inverse of the shock number – a result that seems to hold not only for the rather modest values at Earth, but also higher Mach numbers in the outer solar system and supernovae. Recently we emphasised the non-local nature of electron dynamics at the bow shock, suggesting that the local shock parameters were insufficient to determine the local shock properties. In fact, the controlling influence takes place near the point of tangency between the interplanetary magnetic field and the curved bow shock. This puts MMS in a prime position to explore the detailed physics occurring at such nearly-exactly-perpendicular shocks where the role of adiabatic vs non-adiabatic particle motion, contributions due to electric field spikes, and pre-conditioning electron motion through the extended shock foot all probably play a role. 




Friday, March 4, 2016 

Room 6704 Geology 

3:30 - 5:00 PM 



Refreshments served after the seminar in Room 6850. 



In-Charge 
V. Angelopoulos 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igpp.ucla.edu/pipermail/everyone/attachments/20160304/0611d14f/attachment-0001.html>