Field line resonances are thought to be excited by sources either at the magnetopause or outside it. Recent observations suggest that they may be associated with coherent oscillations or pressure pulses in the solar wind. In either case the excitation mechanism can be understood by considering the incidence of a harmonic wave on the magnetopause from outside the magnetosphere. Calculations are ...

The subsolar magnetosheath is penetrated by transient enhancements in dynamic pressure. These enhancements, also called high-speed jets, can propagate to the magnetopause, causing large-amplitude yet localized boundary indentations on impact. Possible downstream consequences of these impacts are, e.g., local magnetopause reconnection, impulsive penetration of magnetosheath plasma into the magne...

A model of the magnetosheath structure proposed in a recent paper from the authors is extended to estimate the magnetopause stand-o€ distance from solar wind data. For this purpose, the relationship of the magnetopause location to the magnetosheath and solar wind parameters is studied. It is shown that magnetopause erosion may be explained in terms of the magnetosheath magnetic ®eld penetration...

A number of magnetopause models have been developed in the course of last three decades. We have chosen seven of them and tested them using a fresh set of magnetopause crossings observed by Interball-1, Magion-4, and Geotail satellites. The crossings cover the magnetopause from the subsolar region up to near-Earth tail (XGSE ∼ −20 RE) and all geomagnetic latitudes. Our study reveals that (1) th...

In this paper, we use Cluster data from one magnetopause event on 5 July 2001 to compare predictions from various methods for determination of the velocity, orientation, and thickness of the magnetopause current layer. We employ established as well as new multi-spacecraft techniques, in which time differences between the crossings by the four spacecraft, along with the duration of each crossing...