Creating and Refining Parameters to Investigate Compression, Asymmetry, and Space Medium Interactions of Magnetic Obstacles

Authors: Roger Pujadas i Rello (NASA GSFC), Teresa Nieves-Chinchilla (NASA GSFC)

A flux rope is a structure in the Sun’s atmosphere, comprising twisted magnetic field
lines enveloping plasma that travels through the solar system. Multiple models have been
developed to try to determine the behaviour of the magnetic field of this type of events.
Most of them represent the cross-section of the flux rope as concentric circles or ellipses.
The goal of this research is to determine the relevance of the distortion on this models. A
method will also be developed to be able to quantify the compression and asymmetry of
each event and to be able to automatically detect events with certain values of distortion,
for example, non-distorted events. Finally, the distortion of the events will be analyzed to
determine if there are dependencies between the magnitude and frequency of distortion
and parameters such as the solar cycle or the distance to the Sun.