Topological Features of a Compressible Plasma Vortex Sheet: 6 Cases
The Voyager and Pioneer Spacecraft have detected large-scale quasi-periodic plasma fluctuations in the outer heliosphere beyond 20 AU. A plasma vortex sheet model can explain these fluctuations and the observed correlations between various physical variables. The large scale outer heliosphere is modeled by solving the 3-D compressible magnetohydrodynamic equations involving three interacting shear layers.
Computations were done on a Cray computer at the NASA Center for Computational Sciences.
Six cases are animated: Weak magnetic field and strong magnetic field, each at three values of tau, the vortex street characteristic time. Contours of density are shown as dark transparent 'tubes'. Critical points of the velocity field are represented by 'Glyphs'. Vortex cores are shown in orange and blue.
An animation of a vortex street with a weak magnetic field and a tau of 20
An animation of a vortex street with a weak magnetic field and a tau of 40
An animation of a vortex street with a weak magnetic field and a tau of 60
An animation of a vortex street with a strong magnetic field and a tau of 20
An animation of a vortex street with a strong magnetic field and a tau of 80
An animation of a vortex street with a strong magnetic field and a tau of 80
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Scientific Visualization Studio
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Visualizer
- Cindy Starr (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
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Animator
- Pamela ONeil (NASA)
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Scientists
- Edouard Siregar (NASA/GSFC)
- Sanjoy Ghosh (NASA/GSFC)
Release date
This page was originally published on Friday, December 17, 1993.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 2:00 PM EDT.
Series
This page can be found in the following series:Related papers
Siregar, E., D. A. Roberts, and M. L. Goldstein, Quasi-periodic transverse plasma flow associated with an evolving MHD vortex street in the outer heliosphere, J. Geophys. Res., 98, 13, 233, 1993.
Siregar, E., D. A. Roberts, and M. L. Goldstein, Quasi-periodic transverse plasma flow associated with an evolving MHD vortex street in the outer heliosphere, J. Geophys. Res., 98, 13, 233, 1993.