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Estimation of the error on the calculation of the pressure-strain term: application in the terrestrial magnetosphere
  • +11
  • Owen Wyn Roberts,
  • Zoltán Voros,
  • Klaus Torkar,
  • Julia E. Stawarz,
  • Riddhi Bandyopadhyay,
  • Daniel J Gershman,
  • Yasuhito Narita,
  • Rungployphan Kieokaew,
  • Benoit Lavraud,
  • Kristopher Gregory Klein,
  • Yan Yang,
  • Rumi Nakamura,
  • Alexandros Chasapis,
  • William H. Matthaeus
Owen Wyn Roberts
Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Zoltán Voros
Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences
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Klaus Torkar
Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences
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Julia E. Stawarz
Northumbria University
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Riddhi Bandyopadhyay
Princeton University
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Daniel J Gershman
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
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Yasuhito Narita
Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences
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Rungployphan Kieokaew
Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie
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Benoit Lavraud
Laboratoire d'astrophysique de Bordeaux
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Kristopher Gregory Klein
University of Arizona
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Yan Yang
University of Delaware
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Rumi Nakamura
Space Research Institute
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Alexandros Chasapis
University of Colorado
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William H. Matthaeus
University of Delaware
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Abstract

Calculating the pressure-strain terms has recently been performed to quantify energy conversion between the bulk flow energy and the internal energy of plasmas. It has been applied to numerical simulations and satellite data from the Magnetospheric MultiScale Mission. The method requires spatial gradients of the velocity and the use of the full pressure tensor. Here we present a derivation of the errors associated with calculating the pressure-strain terms from multi-spacecraft measurements and apply it to previously studied examples of magnetic reconnection at the magnetopause and the magnetotail. The errors are small in a dense magnetosheath event but much larger in the more tenuous magnetotail. This is likely due to larger counting statistics in the dense plasma at the magnetopause than in the magnetotail. The propagated errors analyzed in this work are important to understand uncertainties of energy conversion measurements in space plasmas and have applications to current and future multi-spacecraft missions.
14 Apr 2023Submitted to ESS Open Archive
16 Apr 2023Published in ESS Open Archive