PlanetarySeminar: Magnetopause surface eigenmodes: Theory, observations, and simulations.

At 14:00 on Wednesday May 26th, 2021, Dr Martin Archer from Imperial College London will be presenting a virtual seminar titled: “Magnetopause surface eigenmodes: Theory, observations, and simulations”. This seminar will be accessible via Teams.

Abstract: “In physics, a common approach to understanding a dynamical system is to determine its normal modes. Planetary magnetospheres have several of these, and while the resonances of system-scale MHD body waves have been studied for decades, the surface eigenmodes have received much less attention due to their difficulty in detection. This seminar explores the observational discovery of magnetopause surface eigenmodes at Earth’s magnetosphere through multipoint spacecraft observations. We subsequently investigate the structure of this mode by considering wave energy propagation, both in the observations and global MHD simulations. This provides a global view of magnetopause surface waves and how they may couple to body waves throughout geospace with implications on radiation belt, ionospheric, and auroral dynamics as well as potential applications to other dynamical systems.”