MAGNETIC DIPS IN THE SOLAR-WIND

Using magnetic data from the HELIOS-1 fluxgate magnetometer, with a 0.2 s resolution, we have investigated the structure of several interplanetary discontinuities involving magnetic dips and rotations of the magnetic field vector. A minimum variance analysis illustrates the behaviour of the magnetic field through the transition. Using this analysis, quite different structures have been isolated and, in particular, narrow transitions resembling almost one dimensional reconnected neutral sheets. For the thinner cases (scale lengths of the magnetic rotation of the order or smaller than 103 km), we find that the observed structures can be the nonlinear effect of a resistive tearing mode instability having developed on an originally one dimensional neutral sheet at the solar corona. © 1979 D. Reidel Publishing Co.