Investigating the Structure and Dynamics of the Heliospheric Current Sheet

Authors: Lizet Casillas (UCLA), Marco Velli (UCLA), Victor Reville (IRAP), Benjamin Lynch (UCLA)

The heliospheric current sheet (HCS) is the boundary between open magnetic field lines of opposite polarity in the solar wind that are also rooted at the sun in regions of opposite polarity. The HCS is often described to be a disk-like sheet that is 10,000 Km thick at 1 AU, warped by the combined effects of the inclination of the magnetic equator on the sun, solar rotation and solar wind expansion. It is usually assumed that the current sheet is unique and somehow continuous, however, this depends, perhaps, on their being a magnetic dipole component dominating the solar surface field. In the presence of a pure quadrupole, one would expect, for example, two separate conical current sheets. Indeed, there has been evidence of more than one current sheet emanating from the corona during solar maximum from LASCO and STEREO observations. How the current sheet forms depends on the energetics of the opening of closed loops by the expanding solar wind in the corona. Parker Solar Probe (PSP) collects magnetic field data as it crosses the HCS intermittently on its orbit. While PSP crosses through the HCS, the Wide-field Imager for Solar Probe (WISPR) captures high-resolution images. Through each PSP encounter, observations have introduced numerous interpretations of the structure of the HSC. We will explore the structure and evolution of the HCS using PSP in-situ magnetic data to catalog HCS crossings, and WISPR images to visualize its structure and how it evolves. We will also examine the possible bifurcation of the current sheet and eventual asymmetries with a simple axially symmetric set of simulations with a superposed dipole and quadrupole.