Observations of Kelvin-Helmholtz waves along the dusk-side boundary of Mercury's magnetosphere during MESSENGER's third flyby

During the third MESSENGER flyby of Mercury on 29 September 2009, 15 crossings of the dusk-side magnetopause were observed in the magnetic field data over a 2-min period, during which the spacecraft traveled a distance of 0.2 R-M (where R-M is Mercury's radius). The quasi-periodic nature of the magnetic field variations during the crossings, the characteristic time separations of similar to 16 s between pairs of crossings, and the variations of the magnetopause normal directions indicate that the signals are likely the signature of surface waves highly steepened at their leading edge that arose from the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. At Earth, the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability is believed to lead to the turbulent transport of solar wind plasma into Earth's plasma sheet. This solar wind entry mechanism could also be important at Mercury. Citation: Boardsen, S. A., T. Sundberg, J. A. Slavin, B. J. Anderson, H. Korth, S. C. Solomon, and L. G. Blomberg (2010), Observations of Kelvin-Helmholtz waves along the dusk-side boundary of Mercury's magnetosphere during MESSENGER's third flyby, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L12101, doi: 10.1029/2010GL043606.