Comparison of counterstreaming suprathermal electron signatures of ICMEs with and without magnetic cloud: are all ICMEs flux ropes?

TL;DR

This study compares counterstreaming suprathermal electron signatures in ICMEs with and without magnetic clouds to investigate whether all ICMEs are flux ropes, revealing that many non-MC ICMEs lack flux rope structures.

Contribution

It provides evidence that a significant portion of non-MC ICMEs may inherently lack magnetic flux rope structures, challenging the assumption that all ICMEs are flux ropes.

Findings

Only 9.9% of MCs lack CSEs, while 43.9% of non-MCs lack CSEs.

Some non-MC ICMEs with high CSE percentages show stable magnetic fields, indicating flux rope flank crossings.

Most non-MC ICMEs have disordered magnetic fields, suggesting they may not be flux ropes.

Abstract

Magnetic clouds (MCs), as large-scale interplanetary magnetic flux ropes, are usually still connected to the sun at both ends near 1 AU. Many researchers believe that all non-MC interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) also have magnetic flux rope structures, which are inconspicuous because the observing spacecraft crosses the flanks of the rope structures. If so, the field lines of non-MC ICMEs should also be usually connected to the Sun on both ends. Then we want to know whether the field lines of most non-MC ICMEs are still connected to the sun at both ends or not. This study examined the counterstreaming suprathermal electron (CSE) signatures of 266 ICMEs observed by the \emph{Advanced Composition Explorer} (\emph{ACE}) spacecraft from 1998 to 2008 and compared the CSE signatures of MCs and non-MC ICMEs. Results show that only 10 of the 101 MC events ($9.9\%$ ) and 75 of the 171 non-MC events ($43.9\%$) have no CSEs. Moreover, 21 of the non-MC ICMEs have high CSE percentages (more than $70\%$) and show relatively stable magnetic field components with slight rotations, which are in line with the expectations that spacecraft passes through the flank of magnetic flux ropes. So the 21 events may be magnetic flux ropes but the \emph{ACE} spacecraft passes through their flanks of magnetic flux ropes. Considering that most other non-MC events have disordered magnetic fields, we suggest that some non-MC ICMEs inherently have disordered magnetic fields, namely have no magnetic flux rope structures.