Small flux ropes and associated global structures identified from multi-point observations with PSP, STEREO-A and Wind

Authors: Kyung-Eun Choi (CBNU,Korea), Dae-Young Lee (CBNU,Korea), Katsuhide Marubashi (NICT,Japan)

Flux ropes are a coherent structure often accompanied by southward magnetic field component, but the origin of small-scale flux ropes is under debate. As one of the origins of small interplanetary magnetic flux ropes, the heliospheric current sheet (HCS) has been suggested by some authors that magnetic reconnection within the HCS can generate a series of blobs and flux ropes. In order to examine this possibility observationally, we apply the force-free model fitting to the magnetic flux ropes identified through multi-point observations. Considering the relative positions of the available spacecraft, we suggest that such flux ropes occur near a specific co-rotating structure which we project on the potential field source surface (PFSS) map.