Multi-point analysis of coronal mass ejection flux ropes using combined data from Solar Orbiter, BepiColombo, and Wind

¹ Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Schmiedlstraße 6, 8042 Graz, Austria
e-mail: andreas.weiss@oeaw.ac.at
² Institute of Physics, University of Graz, Universitätsplatz 5, 8010 Graz, Austria
³ Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik, Hohe Warte 38, 1190 Vienna, Austria
⁴ Department of Physics, Imperial College London, London, UK
⁵ Technical University of Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany

Received: 29 March 2021
Accepted: 31 May 2021

Abstract

Context. The recent launch of Solar Orbiter and the flyby of BepiColombo opened a brief window during which these two spacecraft, along with the existing spacecraft at L1, were positioned in a constellation that allowed for the detailed sampling of any Earth-directed coronal mass ejection (CME). Fortunately, two such events occurred during this time period with in situ detections of an interplanetary coronal mass ejection (ICME) by Solar Orbiter on the 2020 April 19 and 2020 May 28. These two events were subsequently observed in situ by BepiColombo and Wind as well around a day later.

Aims. We attempt to reconstruct the observed in situ magnetic field measurements for all three spacecraft simultaneously using an empirical magnetic flux rope model. This allows us to test the validity of our flux rope model on a larger and more global scale. It additionally allows for cross-validation of the analysis with different spacecraft combinations. Finally, we can also compare the results from the in situ modeling to remote observations obtained from the STEREO-A heliospheric imagers, which were able to capture the interplanetary evolution of the coronal mass ejections.

Methods. We made use of the 3D coronal rope ejection model (3DCORE) in order to simulate the ICME evolution and reconstruct the measured flux rope signatures at the spacecraft positions. For this purpose, we adapted a previously developed approximate Bayesian Computation sequential Monte-Carlo (ABC-SMC) fitting algorithm for the application to multi-point scenarios. This approach not only allows us to find global solutions, within the limits of our model, but to also naturally generate error estimates on the model parameters and detect potential ambiguities.

Results. We show that we are able to generally reconstruct the flux rope signatures at three different spacecraft positions simultaneously by using our model in combination with the flux rope fitting algorithm. For the well-behaved April 19 ICME, our approach works very well and displays only minor deficiencies. The May 28 ICME, on the other hand, shows the limitations of our approach for less clear ICME measurements or strongly deformed shapes. Unfortunately, the usage of multi-point observations for these events does not appear to solve inherent issues, such as the estimation of the magnetic field twist or flux rope aspect-ratios due to the specific constellation of the spacecraft positions, which all lie near the ecliptic plane. As our general approach can be used for any fast-forward simulation based model, we give a blueprint for future studies using more advanced ICME models.