资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

We analyze multi‐point measurements in magnetosheath plasmas, just upstream of the Earth's magnetopause, to investigate the morphology of the turbulent fields and coincident 3‐D ion distributions observed. Using interferometric and generalized wave polarization analyses we show how the fields comprise a multi‐scale spectrum of Alfvénic structures composed of flow shears and vortices, and current sheets and filaments advected over the spacecraft with the magnetosheath flow. It is shown how these features are correlated with intervals of enhanced ion energy, temperature anisotropy and impulsive variations in the agyrotropy of ion velocity space distributions. It is demonstrated that the observed variation in ion properties is inconsistent with an adiabatic response but is instead correlated with the spectral energy density of non‐planar structures at ion gyro‐radii scales. The capacity of these field structures to scatter ions is considered.