Probing the magnetic field of a coronal mass ejection with PSR J1022+1001

El Mehdi Zahraoui; Hannah T. Rüdisser; Golam M. Shaifullah; Caterina Tiburzi; Jean-Mathias Grießmeier; Ute V. Amerstorfer; Christian Möstl; Mateja Dumbovic; Emma E. Davies; Pietro Zucca; Joris P. W. Verbiest; Andreas J. Weiss; Louis Bondonneau; Baptiste Cecconi; Benedetta Ciardi; Christian Vocks; Gilles Theureau; Julien Girard; Oleksandr Konovalenko; Vyacheslav Zakharenko; Oleg Ulyanov; Peter Tokarsky; Stéphane Corbel; Philippe Zarka; Cyril Tasse; Ralf-Jürgen Dettmar; Ihor P. Kravtsov

arXiv · 2603.18051

Probing the magnetic field of a coronal mass ejection with PSR J1022+1001

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Abstract

We investigate whether low-frequency pulsar observations can provide LoS magnetic field estimates and whether these are consistent with synthetic LoS signatures extracted from a three-dimensional CME reconstruction constrained by Solar Orbiter data. We analyze a CME occultation of the LoS to PSR J1022+1001 on 20 August 2021 at a projected heliocentric distance of 24.6 R_sun, observed simultaneously with LOFAR and NenuFAR. From LOFAR, we derive time-resolved dispersion measure (DM) and rotation measure (RM) and isolate the CME contributions using background estimates for interstellar, solar wind and ionospheric components. We then infer the density-weighted LoS-averaged magnetic field component _PSR from the ratio delta-RM/delta-DM. In parallel, we reconstruct the CME using a semi-empirical 3DCORE model fitted to Solar Orbiter in-situ magnetic field observations at 0.65 au. We sample the modeled magnetic field along the pulsar LoS using fixed spatial sampling points and compute synthetic LoS-averaged signatures _3D for different flux rope configurations. The derived _PSR increases from approximately -9 nT to a peak near 63 nT during the observed interval. Comparison with synthetic signatures shows that the polarity and temporal evolution of the LoS signal are strongly dependent on the flux rope configuration and only a South-West-North (SWN) configuration (confirmed by Solar Orbiter in-situ data) reproduces the observed sign and overall evolution, whereas alternative configurations are incompatible. The modeled amplitudes, however, are systematically larger than the pulsar-derived values by roughly a factor of five. We show that simultaneous low-frequency pulsar DM and RM measurements can provide LoS magnetic field estimates for a CME and can be used to test CME magnetic structure against data-constrained three-dimensional reconstructions.

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El Mehdi Zahraoui, Hannah T. Rüdisser, Golam M. Shaifullah, Caterina Tiburzi, Jean-Mathias Grießmeier, Ute V. Amerstorfer, Christian Möstl, Mateja Dumbovic, Emma E. Davies, Pietro Zucca, Joris P. W. Verbiest, Andreas J. Weiss, Louis Bondonneau, Baptiste Cecconi, Benedetta Ciardi, Christian Vocks, Gilles Theureau, Julien Girard, Oleksandr Konovalenko, Vyacheslav Zakharenko, Oleg Ulyanov, Peter Tokarsky, Stéphane Corbel, Philippe Zarka, Cyril Tasse, Ralf-Jürgen Dettmar, Ihor P. Kravtsov. 2026-03-17. Probing the magnetic field of a coronal mass ejection with PSR J1022+1001. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.18051

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