PLASMOID RELEASES IN THE HELIOSPHERIC CURRENT SHEET AND ASSOCIATED CORONAL HOLE BOUNDARY LAYER EVOLUTION

As the heliospheric current sheet (HCS) is corotating past STEREO-B, near-Earth spacecraft ACE, Wind and Cluster, and STEREO-A over more than three days between 2008 January 10 and 14, we observe various sections of (near-pressure-balanced) flux-rope-and magnetic-island-type plasmoids in the associated heliospheric plasma sheet (HPS). The plasmoids can qualify as slow interplanetary coronal mass ejections and are relatively low proton beta (<0.5) structures, with small length scales (an order of magnitude lower than typical magnetic cloud values) and low magnetic field strengths (2-8 nT). One of them, in particular, detected at STEREO-B, corresponds to the first reported evidence of a detached plasmoid in the HPS. The in situ signatures near Earth are associated with a long-decay X-ray flare and a slow small-scale streamer ejecta, observed remotely with white-light coronagraphs aboard STEREO-B and SOHO and tracked by triangulation. Before the arrival of the HPS, a coronal hole boundary layer (CHBL) is detected in situ. The multi-spacecraft observations indicate a CHBL stream corotating with the HCS but with a decreasing speed distribution suggestive of a localized or transient nature. While we may reasonably assume that an interaction between ejecta and CHBL provides the source of momentum for the slow ejecta's acceleration, the outstanding composition properties of the CHBL near Earth provide here circumstantial evidence that this interaction or possibly an earlier one, taking place during streamer swelling when the ejecta rises slowly, results in additional mixing processes.