When the velocity shear between the two plasmas separated by Earth’s magnetopause is locally super-Alfvénic, the Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instability can develop. A crucial role is played by the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) orientation, which can stabilize the velocity shear. Although, in a linear regime, the instability threshold is equally satisfied during both northward and southward IMF orientations, in-situ measurements show that KH instability is preferentially excited during the northward IMF orientation. We investigate this different behavior by means of a mixing parameter which we apply to two KH events to identify both boundaries and the center of waves/vortices. During the northward orientation, the waves/vortex boundaries have stronger electrons than ions mixing, while the opposite is observed at their center. During the southward orientation, instead, particle mixing is observed predominantly at the boundaries. In addition, stronger local ion and electron non-thermal features are observed during the northward than the southward IMF orientation. Specifically, ion distribution functions are more distorted, due to field-aligned beams, and electrons have a larger temperature anisotropy during the northward than the southward IMF orientation. The observed kinetic features provide an insight into both local and remote processes that affect the evolution of KH structures.

We introduce the mixing parameter to analyze the \textit{in situ} measurements of a Kelvin-Helmholtz event observed by the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission. We define the mixing parameter, for both ions and electrons, using the well distinct particle energies which characterize the magnetosphere and magnetosheath plasmas. This parameter nicely identifies the different populations which are interacting at the Earth’s magnetopause and the boundaries of Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices. Thus, we analyze the crossing of each structure into a parameter-space defined as the space of the electron mixing versus the ion mixing, where specific shapes occur according to the evolutionary phase of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. All along the event, we observe three different types of shapes, namely a straight line, a simple loop, and a complex loop, which likely correspond to surface waves, vortices in the early nonlinear phase and rolled-up vortices in the fully nonlinear stage, respectively. The most complex shape (rolled-up vortex) is observed only at the end of the interval, owing to a fast growth of the instability which is connected to variations of the solar wind magnetic field orientation.