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Yutian Chi

Publications and source records attributed to Yutian Chi.

12 recordsLinked to original sources

The Internal Magnetic Field Structure of ICMEs in the Heliosphere

Interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) are major drivers of heliospheric disturbances and space-weather effects. Here we present a multi-spacecraft study of 96 magnetic clouds (MCs) distributed over a broad range of heliocentric distances, and reconstruct their internal magnetic structure with a uniform-twist Gold--Hoyle (GH) flux-rope model. From the fits, we derive the axial field strength $B_0$, the twist density (turn density) $\tau$, the GH parameter $\omega$, and the integrated twist number $n$. We find that $B_0$ and the turn density $\tau$ both decrease with increasing heliocentric distance, consistent with expansion and axial stretching during propagation. A key result is that the upper envelope in the $\tau$--$R$ plane corresponds to a nearly constant boundary in the dimensionless GH parameter $\omega=2\pi R\tau$, close to $\omega\sim2$. Therefore, the inferred upper value of $\tau$ is not scale-independent, but follows $\tau_{\max}\simeq \omega_{\max}/(2\pi R)$ for a given flux-rope radius. In contrast, the estimated integrated turn number $n$ shows no similarly clear radial organization in the present sample. This study investigates the ICME structure and magnetic field characteristics across heliocentric distances from 0.07 to 5.4~AU, thereby providing observational constraints on the large-scale evolution of interplanetary magnetic flux ropes.

astro-ph.SR

The coronal mass ejection productivity of solar active region 13664/8

In May 2024, NOAA active region (AR) complex 13664/8 was one of the most productive regions of the current solar cycle, producing 12 X-class flares and over 20 coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and triggering the strongest geomagnetic storm since 2003. We investigate why this AR complex was so CME-productive. Using primarily SDO/AIA and SDO/HMI observations, we analyzed its photospheric magnetic evolution, eruption sources, eruption waiting times, and magnetic parameters in comparison with five other ARs. The region initially contained only AR 13664 and exhibited limited flare activity until AR 13668 emerged on May 4, after which clustered major flares and CMEs occurred. Rapid, complex flux emergence substantially increased the region's area, magnetic flux, complexity, and nonpotentiality. The increased complexity was manifested by at least 12 emerging bipoles and six collisional polarity inversion lines (cPILs) formed between nonconjugated polarities, all showing sustained collision and shearing and serving as eruption sources. Decay index distributions show systematically lower critical heights (<45 Mm) above CME source regions. The CME waiting time distribution exhibits two peaks, suggesting that multiple cPILs enhanced CME productivity by increasing both recurrent CMEs from the same source and disturbance-triggered CMEs from nearby sources. These results indicate that, in addition to sufficient nonpotentiality and rapid background-field decay, high magnetic complexity accompanied by dynamical collisional shearing at multiple cPILs was crucial for the extreme CME productivity of AR 13664/8.

astro-ph.SR

Magnetic Field Data Calibration with Transformer Model Using Physical Constraints: A Scalable Method for Satellite Missions, Illustrated by Tianwen-1

This study introduces a novel approach that integrates the magnetic field data correction from the Tianwen-1 Mars mission with a neural network architecture constrained by physical principles derived from Maxwell's equation equations. By employing a Transformer based model capable of efficiently handling sequential data, the method corrects measurement anomalies caused by satellite dynamics, instrument interference, and environmental noise. As a result, it significantly improves both the accuracy and the physical consistency of the calibrated data. Compared to traditional methods that require long data segments and manual intervention often taking weeks or even months to complete this new approach can finish calibration in just minutes to hours, and predictions are made within seconds. This innovation not only accelerates the process of space weather modeling and planetary magnetospheric studies but also provides a robust framework for future planetary exploration and solar wind interaction research.

physics.space-ph

Interplanetary Rotation of 2021 December 4 CME

The magnetic orientation of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) is of great importance to understand their space weather effects. Although many evidences suggest that CMEs can undergo significant rotation during the early phases of evolution in the solar corona, there are few reports that CMEs rotate in the interplanetary space. In this work, we use multi-spacecraft observations and a numerical simulation starting from the lower corona close to the solar surface to understand the CME event on 2021 December 4, with an emphatic investigation of its rotation. This event is observed as a partial halo CME from the back side of the Sun by coronagraphs, and reaches the BepiColombo spacecraft and the MAVEN/Tianwen-1 as a magnetic flux rope-like structure. The simulation discloses that in the solar corona the CME is approximately a translational motion, while the interplanetary propagation process evidences a gradual change of axis orientation of the CME's flux rope-like structure. It is also found that the downside and the right flank of the CME moves with the fast solar wind, and the upside does in the slow-speed stream. The different parts of the CME with different speeds generate the nonidentical displacements of its magnetic structure, resulting in the rotation of the CME in the interplanetary space. Furthermore, at the right flank of the CME exists a corotating interaction region (CIR), which makes the orientation of the CME alter, and also deviates from its route due to the CME. These results provide new insight on interpreting CMEs' dynamics and structures during their travelling through the heliosphere.

astro-ph.SR

Interplanetary Coronal Mass Ejections and Stream Interaction Regions observed by Tianwen-1 and Maven at Mars

Tianwen-1 spacecraft (Wan et al. 2020) is China's first Mars exploration mission. The Mars Orbiter Magnetometer (MOMAG) is a scientific instrument aboard the Tianwen-1 mission that is designed to study magnetic fields at Mars, including the solar wind to the magnetosheath and the ionosphere. Using the first Tianwen-1/MOMAG data that is publicly available, we present interplanetary coronal mass ejection (ICME) and stream interaction region (SIR) catalogues based on in-situ observations at Mars between November 16, 2021, and December 31, 2021. We compared the magnetic field intensity and vector magnetic field measurements from Tianwen-1/MOMAG and Mars Atmospheric Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN)/MAG during the ICME and SIR interval and found a generally good consistency between them. Due to MAVEN's orbital adjustment since 2019, the Tianwen-1/MOMAG instrument is currently the almost unique interplanetary magnetic field monitor at Mars. The observations indicate that the MOMAG instrument on Tianwen-1 is performing well and can provide accurate measurements of the vector magnetic field in the near-Mars solar wind space. The multi-point observations combining MOMAG, MINPA, and MEPA on board Tianwen-1 with MAG, SWIA, and STATIC on board MAVEN will open a window to systematically study the characteristic of ICMEs and SIRs at Mars, and their influences on the Martian atmosphere and ionosphere.

physics.space-ph

In-flight Calibration of the Magnetometer on the Mars Orbiter of Tianwen-1

Mars Orbiter Magnetometer (MOMAG) is one of seven science payloads onboard Tianwen-1's orbiter. Unlike most of the satellites, Tianwen-1's orbiter is not magnetically cleaned, and the boom where placed the magnetometer's sensors is not long enough. These pose many challenges to the magnetic field data processing. In this paper, we introduce the in-flight calibration process of the Tianwen-1/MOMAG. The magnetic interference from the spacecraft, including spacecraft generated dynamic field and slowly-changing offsets are cleaned in sequence. Then the calibrated magnetic field data are compared with the data from the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN). We find that some physical structures in the solar wind are consistent between the two data sets, and the distributions of the magnetic field strength in the solar wind are very similar. These results suggest that the in-flight calibration of the MOMAG is successful and the MOMAG provides reliable data for scientific research.

astro-ph.EP

The Mars Orbiter Magnetometer of Tianwen-1: In-flight Performance and First Science Results

Mars Orbiter MAGnetometer (MOMAG) is a scientifc instrument onboard the orbiter of China's first mission for Mars -- Tianwen-1. It started to routinely measure the magnetic field from the solar wind to magnetic pile-up region surrounding Mars since November 13, 2021. Here we present its in-flight performance and first science results based on the first one and a half months' data. By comparing with the magnetic field data in the solar wind from the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN), the magnetic field by MOMAG is at the same level in magnitude, and the same magnetic structures with the similar variations in three components could be found in MOMAG data. In the first one and a half months, we recognize 158 clear bow shock (BS) crossings from MOMAG data, whose locations statistically match well with the modeled average BS. We also identify 5 pairs of simultaneous BS crossings of the Tianwen-1's orbiter and MAVEN. These BS crossings confirm the global shape of modeled BS as well as the south-north asymmetry of the Martian BS. Two presented cases in this paper suggest that the BS is probably more dynamic at flank than near the nose. So far, MOMAG performs well, and provides accurate magnetic field vectors. MOMAG is continuously scanning the magnetic field surrounding Mars. These measurements complemented by observations from MAVEN will undoubtedly advance our understanding of the plasma environment of Mars.

astro-ph.EP

Reconstructing solar wind inhomogeneous structures from stereoscopic observations in white-light: Solar wind transients in 3D

White-light images from Heliospheric Imager-1 (HI1) onboard the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) provide 2-dimensional (2D) global views of solar wind transients traveling in the inner heliosphere from two perspectives. How to retrieve the hidden three-dimensional (3D) features of the transients from these 2D images is intriguing but challenging. In our previous work (Li et al., 2018), a 'correlation-aided' method is developed to recognize the solar wind transients propagating along the Sun-Earth line based on simultaneous HI1 images from two STEREO spacecraft. Here the method is extended from the Sun-Earth line to the whole 3D space to reconstruct the solar wind transients in the common field of view of STEREO HI1 cameras. We demonstrate the capability of the method by showing the 3D shapes and propagation directions of a coronal mass ejection (CME) and three small-scale blobs during 3-4 April 2010. Comparing with some forward modeling methods, we found our method reliable in terms of the position, angular width and propagation direction. Based on our 3D reconstruction result, an angular distorted, nearly North-South oriented CME on 3 April 2010 is revealed, manifesting the complexity of a CME's 3D structure.

astro-ph.SR

Reconstructing solar wind inhomogeneous structures from stereoscopic observations in white-light: Small transients along the Sun-Earth line

The Heliospheric Imagers (HI) on board the two spacecraft of the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) provided white-light images of transients in the solar wind from dual perspectives from 2007 to 2014. In this paper, we develop a new method to identify and locate the transients automatically from simultaneous images from the two inner telescopes, known as HI-1, based on a correlation analysis. Correlation coefficient (cc) maps along the Sun-Earth line are constructed for the period from 1 Jan 2010 to 28 Feb 2011. From the maps, transients propagating along the Sun-Earth line are identified, and a 27-day periodic pattern is revealed, especially for small-scale transients. Such a periodicity in the transient pattern is consistent with the rotation of the Sun's global magnetic structure and the periodic crossing of the streamer structures and slow solar wind across the Sun-Earth line, and this substantiates the reliability of our method and the high degree of association between the small-scale transients of the slow solar wind and the coronal streamers. Besides, it is suggested by the cc map that small-scale transients along the Sun-Earth line are more frequent than large-scale transients by a factor of at least 2, and that they quickly diffused into background solar wind within about 40 Rs in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio of white-light emissions. The method provides a new tool to reconstruct inhomogeneous structures in the heliosphere from multiple perspectives.

astro-ph.SR

Why the Shock-ICME Complex Structure is Important: Learning From the Early 2017 September CMEs

In the early days of 2017 September, an exceptionally energetic solar active region AR12673 aroused great interest in the solar physics community. It produced four X class flares, more than 20 CMEs and an intense geomagnetic storm, for which the peak value of the Dst index reached up to -142nT at 2017 September 8 02:00 UT. In this work, we check the interplanetary and solar source of this intense geomagnetic storm. We find that this geomagnetic storm was mainly caused by a shock-ICME complex structure, which was formed by a shock driven by the 2017 September 6 CME propagating into a previous ICME which was the interplanetary counterpart of the 2017 September 4 CME. To better understand the role of this structure, we conduct the quantitative analysis about the enhancement of ICME's geoeffectiveness induced by the shock compression. The analysis shows that the shock compression enhanced the intensity of this geomagnetic storm by a factor of two. Without shock compression, there would be only a moderate geomagnetic storm with a peak Dst value of -79 nT. In addition, the analysis of the proton flux signature inside the shock-ICME complex structure shows that this structure also enhanced the solar energetic particles (SEPs) intensity by a factor of ~ 5. These findings illustrate that the shock-ICME complex structure is a very important factor in solar physics study and space weather forecast.

physics.space-ph

On the twists of interplanetary magnetic flux ropes observed at 1 AU

Magnetic flux ropes (MFRs) are one kind of fundamental structures in the solar physics, and involved in various eruption phenomena. Twist, characterizing how the magnetic field lines wind around a main axis, is an intrinsic property of MFRs, closely related to the magnetic free energy and stableness. So far it is unclear how much amount of twist is carried by MFRs in the solar atmosphere and in heliosphere and what role the twist played in the eruptions of MFRs. Contrasting to the solar MFRs, there are lots of in-situ measurements of magnetic clouds (MCs), the large-scale MFRs in interplanetary space, providing some important information of the twist of MFRs. Thus, starting from MCs, we investigate the twist of interplanetary MFRs with the aid of a velocity-modified uniform-twist force-free flux rope model. It is found that most of MCs can be roughly fitted by the model and nearly half of them can be fitted fairly well though the derived twist is probably over-estimated by a factor of 2.5. By applying the model to 115 MCs observed at 1 AU, we find that (1) the twist angles of interplanetary MFRs generally follow a trend of about $0.6\frac{l}{R}$ radians, where $\frac{l}{R}$ is the aspect ratio of a MFR, with a cutoff at about $12π$ radians AU$^{-1}$, (2) most of them are significantly larger than $2.5π$ radians but well bounded by $2\frac{l}{R}$ radians, (3) strongly twisted magnetic field lines probably limit the expansion and size of MFRs, and (4) the magnetic field lines in the legs wind more tightly than those in the leading part of MFRs. These results not only advance our understanding of the properties and behavior of interplanetary MFRs, but also shed light on the formation and eruption of MFRs in the solar atmosphere. A discussion about the twist and stableness of solar MFRs are therefore given.

astro-ph.SR

Satistical Study of the Interplanetary Coronal Mass Ejections from 1996 to 2014

In this work, we establish an ICME list from 1996 to 2014 based on the in-situ observations from the WIND and ACE satellites. Based on this ICME list, we extend the statistical analysis of the ICMEs to the solar maximum phase of solar cycle 24th. The analysis of the annual variations of the properties of ICMEs show that the number of ICMEs, the number of shocks, the percentage of ICMEs drove shocks, the magnetic field and plasma properties of ICMEs are well correlated with the solar cycle variation. The number of MCs do not show any correlation with sunspot number. But, the percentage of the MCs in ICMEs show good anti-correlation with the sunspot number. By comparison the parameters of MCs with None-MC ICMEs, we found that the MCs are stronger than the None-MC ICMEs . In addition, we compare the parameters of ICMEs with and without shocks. It is found that the ICMEs with shocks are much stronger than the ICME without shocks. Meanwhile, we discuss the distribution of the magnetic field and solar wind plasmas parameters of the sheath regions of ICMEs at first time. We find that the magnetic field and solar wind velocity in the sheath region are higher than them in the ejecta of ICMEs from statistical point of view.

astro-ph.SR