Authors: Lizet Casillas(UCLA), Benjamin Lynch(UCLA), Marco Velli(UCLA), Victor Reville(irap), Olga Panasenco (Advanced Heliophysics)

The heliospheric current sheet (HCS) is the boundary between open magnetic fields in the solar wind of opposite polarity that connect back to their respective open flux regions in the corona. The HCS is often described to be a disc-like sheet, warped by the combined effects of the inclination of the magnetic equator on the sun, solar rotation and solar wind expansion. This is largely due to the observed photospheric magnetic field having a significant dipole component. However, in the absence of a dipole, a dominant quadrupole could result in two separate HCSs. Indeed, periods where more than one distinct HCS appears to be present have been observed. How current sheets in the outer corona form—and their stability evolves—as they are dragged out into the heliosphere, depends on the flux content, force balance, and the dynamics of closed-loops opening up and open-loops closing back down at the boundaries of the largest-scale coronal flux systems. We report on a set of idealized, axisymmetric solar wind relaxation simulations, performed with the AW-Predict extension of the PLUTO MHD code, designed to study the transition of the single-HCS corona and inner heliosphere into a multiple-HCS configuration by systematically varying the dipole and quadrupole components’ relative magnitudes. We find that when these are approximately equal, a model corona can oscillate between a one- and two-HCS configuration on timescales of days-to-weeks. We characterize the plasma dynamics of the transition of a global-scale, closed-flux pseudostreamer into localized, secondary helmet streamer belt with its own HCS surrounding the newly-opened, opposite-polarity coronal hole. We discuss the implications of our results for solar cycle evolution and the dynamic coupling of the highly structured corona and inner heliosphere. Extending these insights to observations, we identify these HCS and pseudostreamer configurations across all phases of the solar cycle by analyzing the dipole and quadrupole components of the observed magnetic field.