Student project work

Student project work in Space Plasma Physics

Applying the curlometer method on Cluster II FGM magnetometer data

Student: Christian Maszl
Supervisor: Stephan Buchert
Work performed at: Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala

The "curlometer" method is a means of calculating the curl of a vector field from four-point measurements of the field vector. In this project, this method was applied to data from the fluxgate magnetometer instrument (FGM) on ESA's
four CLUSTER II satellites. The primary objective was to compute the current density via Ampère's law. In order to investigate data over long periods, a Matlab program was created to perform such tasks. Additionally the structure of the program was designed to allow plugins for other instruments to be implemented easily (e.g. WHISER, EDI, CIS... = multipurpose software). Finally, some basic model current sheets were tested to demonstrate the limitations of the curlometer method quite plainly.

The size of the project corresponded to a Swedish 10 p undergraduate project (examensarbete).

Project report (PDF, 5.4 MB)

Files

[Cluster tetrahedron]
Cluster tetrahedron formation.

http://www.space.irfu.se/exjobb/2004_christian_maszl/maszl.html
Last modified onFriday, 01-Oct-2004 14:45:55 CEST