Recent observations of the interplanetary magnetic field have enlarged the magnetic field topology family in the inner heliosphere, and raises interest in the relationship between those topologies and the evolution of solar wind. For example, switchbacks that are kinks of magnetic field lines accompanied by velocity spikes and enhancement of the proton parallel temperature, have free energy both of the field and of the particles, and thus have potential for a series of plasma instabilities. It is favorable to extract elementary topologies from complicated structures like switchbacks before we look further in. Based on Particle-in-Cell simulations, we discuss from elementary topologies on the effect they have on kinetic processes of the solar wind plasma.
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Lin et al. (2024) studied this question.
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