ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Astron. Space Sci.
Sec. Planetary Science
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspas.2025.1688155
This article is part of the Research TopicExploring Solar Wind Interactions with Inner Solar System Bodies: New Frontiers, Insights, and Future DirectionsView all articles
Whistler wave mode generation via large amplitude steepened magnetic structures propagating through the Martian ionosphere
Provisionally accepted
Christopher M Fowler1*
K. G. Hanley2
Jasper Halekas3C. E. Regan4J. McFadden2D. Mitchell2
Laila Andersson5D. Bark5Y. Harada6
Yingjuan Ma7C. Chaston2
Beatriz Sánchez-Cano8M. Lester8D. Brain5C. Mazelle9J. Espley10M. Benna10R. Jolitz2S. Curry5- 1Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cell Biology, West Virginia University, Morgantown, United States
- 2University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, United States
- 3University of Iowa Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa City, United States
- 4West Virginia University, Morgantown, United States
- 5University of Colorado Boulder Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder, United States
- 6Department of Geophysics, Kyoto University, Japan, Kyoto, Japan
- 7University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, United States
- 8University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom
- 9IRAP, CNRS, UPS, CNES, University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France
- 10NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, United States
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In December 2023 a coronal mass ejection impacted Mars and left the magnetosphere in a highly disturbed state that was observed by NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission. One consequence of this space weather impact was the driving of large amplitude (∼50 nT) steepened magnetic structures that propagated into the dayside ionosphere. Here we focus on electromagnetic waves that were observed coincident with some of these magnetic structures. We demonstrate that these waves were the obliquely propagating whistler wave mode, confirmed by wavelet transform and minimum variance analyses. The waves were right hand quasi-circularly polarized with a frequency centered around 1 Hz, and demonstrated the typical dispersion features as a function of time and frequency that are associated with the whistler wave mode. The observations were consistent with the waves being generated by currents running along the steepened edges of the magnetic structures, in analogy to collisionless shocks. The whistler mode waves appeared to play an important role in the evolution of the magnetic structures, acting to smooth out the discontinuity between the up-and downstream sides of the steepened edges. While plasma conditions likely prevented the whistler mode waves from Landau damping with the ambient electrons at periapsis, such damping may have been possible at higher altitudes (600-800 km). This study further highlights the importance of understanding the impact of space weather within our solar system, demonstrating that such events can impact planetary magnetospheres and the ionospheres embedded within them.
Keywords: Mars, Ionosphere, Whistler wave, Space weather, Solar wind interaction
Received: 18 Aug 2025; Accepted: 09 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Fowler, Hanley, Halekas, Regan, McFadden, Mitchell, Andersson, Bark, Harada, Ma, Chaston, Sánchez-Cano, Lester, Brain, Mazelle, Espley, Benna, Jolitz and Curry. 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: Christopher M Fowler, christopher.fowler@mail.wvu.edu
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