TECHNOLOGY AND CODE article
Front. Astron. Space Sci.
Sec. Space Physics
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspas.2025.1644464
Novel Method and Tool to Identify Solitary Waves in the Martian Plasma Environment
Provisionally accepted
- Indian Institute of Geomagnetism, Mumbai, India
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This paper introduces a method and an innovative graphical user interface (GUI) tool to identify bipolar solitary wave structures in the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission dataset. As input to this tool, we utilized medium-frequency burst mode calibrated electric field data obtained from the Langmuir Probe and Waves (LPW) instrument aboard MAVEN. To detect solitary waves, we first discuss the typical theoretical solitary wave structure and its key features.Based on these features, we developed a series of mathematical conditions that are applied to the LPW electric field dataset. After rigorous testing, a MATLAB executable GUI application named SWIT (Solitary Wave Identifying Tool) was developed. The output of SWIT provides the amplitude, width, and time of occurrence of the solitary waves. Furthermore, we evaluate the accuracy and limitations of SWIT. It is found that SWIT demonstrates high efficiency. It is a dedicated identifier for analyzing medium-frequency electric field measurements from the MAVEN spacecraft to search for solitary wave structures in the Martian plasma environment. It is suggested that this novel method can be applied to datasets from different spacecraft in other planetary plasma environments with minor modifications.
Keywords: Planetary magnetosphere, Martian Upper Atmosphere, electrostatic solitary waves, phase space holes, graphical user interface
Received: 10 Jun 2025; Accepted: 13 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Pandey, Kakad and Kakad. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Sahil Pandey, Indian Institute of Geomagnetism, Mumbai, India
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