Local bow shock environment during magnetosheath jet formation: results from a hybrid-Vlasov simulation

Abstract

Magnetosheath jets are plasma structures that are characterised by enhanced dynamic pressure and/or plasma velocity. In this study, we investigate the formation of magnetosheath jets in four two-dimensional simulation runs of the global magnetospheric hybrid-Vlasov model Vlasiator. We focus on jets whose origins were not clearly determined in a previous study using the same simulations (Suni et al., 2021) to have been associated with foreshock structures of enhanced dynamic pressure and magnetic field. We find that these jets can be divided into two categories based on their direction of propagation, either predominantly antisunward or predominantly toward the flanks of the magnetosphere. As antisunward-propagating jets can potentially impact the magnetopause and have effects on the magnetosphere, understanding which foreshock and bow shock phenomena are associated with them is important. The antisunward-propagating jets have properties indistinguishable from those of the jets found in the previous study. This indicates that the antisunward jets investigated in this paper belong to the same continuum as the jets previously found to be caused by foreshock structures; however, due to the criteria used in the previous study, they did not appear in this category before. These jets together make up 86 % of all jets in this study. The flankward-propagating jets make up 14 % of all jets and are different, showing no clear association with foreshock structures and exhibiting temperature anisotropy unlike the other jets. We suggest that they could consist of quasi-perpendicular magnetosheath plasma, indicating that these jets could be associated with local turning of the shock geometry from quasi-parallel to quasi-perpendicular. This turning could be due to bow shock reformation at the oblique shock caused by foreshock ultralow-frequency (ULF) wave activity.