Identification of a single plasma parcel during a radial alignment of the Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter

¹ LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université Paris Cité, 5 Place Jules Janssen, 92195 Meudon, France
e-mail: etienne.berriot@obspm.fr
² Laboratoire Cogitamus, rue Descartes, 75005 Paris, France

Received: 19 January 2024
Accepted: 20 March 2024

Abstract

Configurations in which two spacecraft, such as the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) and Solar Orbiter, are radially aligned provide opportunities for studying the evolution of a single solar wind parcel during so-called plasma line-ups. The most critical part of these studies arguably is the identification of what can be considered the same plasma crossing both spacecraft. We present here a method that allowed us to determine what we think to be the same plasma parcel that passed through PSP (∼0.075 au) and Solar Orbiter (∼0.9 au) after their radial alignment on April 29, 2021. We started by modeling the plasma propagation in order to obtain a first estimation of the plasma line-up intervals. The identification of the same density structure (with a crossing duration ∼1.5 h) that passed through the two spacecraft allowed us to specify and confirm this estimate. Our main finding is that the density structure was very stable and remained well recognizable from PSP to Solar Orbiter despite its journey of ∼137 hours in the inner heliosphere. We found, moreover, that the slow solar wind plasma parcel was significantly accelerated (from ∼200 to ∼300 km s⁻¹) during its propagation.