Field-aligned currents and magnetic disturbances in the dayside polar region

Field-aligned currents in the day-time cusp-region are regarded as the superposition of various current sheets under the influence of different solar wind parameters. The principal feature of this pattern is a specific region 3 of field-aligned currents located poleward of region 1 and affected by both the azimuthal and northward components of the interplanetary magnetic field. It is shown that recent measurements carried out on the TRIAD satellite (Saflekos and Potemra, 1979) unambiguously point to the existence of region 3. The data on the transverse magnetic disturbances supplied by S3-2 satellite (Doyle et al., 1981) accord with our model on taking into account the relations between the IMF parameters and the field-aligned current intensity.     

Forecast of the key parameters of the 24-th solar cycle

To predict the key parameters of the solar cycle,a new method is proposed based on the empirical law describing the correlation between the maximum height of the preceding solar cycle and the entropy of the forthcoming one.The entropy of the forthcoming cycle may be estimated using this empirical law,if the maximum height of the current cycle is known.The cycle entropy is shown to correlate well with the cycle's maximum height and,as a consequence,the height of the forthcoming maximum can be estimated.In turn,the correlation found between the height of the maximum and the duration of the ascending branch(the Waldmeier rule)allows the epoch of the maximum,Tmax,to be estimated,if the date of the minimum is known.Moreover,using the law discovered,one can find out the analogous cycles which are similar to the cycle being forecasted,and hence,obtain the synoptic forecast of all main features of the forthcoming cycle.The estimates have shown the accuracy level of this technique to be 86%.The new regularities discovered are also interesting because they are fundamental in the theory of solar cycles and may provide new empirical data.The main parameters of the future solar cycle 24 are as follows: the height of the maximum is Wmax = 95±20,the duration of the ascending branch is Ta = 4.5±0.5 yr,the total cycle duration according to the synoptic forecast is 11.3 yr.     

Constraining dark matter properties with SPI

Using the high-resolution spectrometer SPI on board the International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory ( INTEGRAL ), we search for a spectral line produced by a dark matter (DM) particle with a mass in the range  40 keV < M _DM < 14 MeV  , decaying in the DM halo of the Milky Way. To distinguish the DM decay line from numerous instrumental lines found in the SPI background spectrum, we study the dependence of the intensity of the line signal on the offset of the SPI pointing from the direction toward the Galactic Centre. After a critical analysis of the uncertainties of the DM density profile in the inner Galaxy, we find that the intensity of the DM decay line should decrease by at least a factor of 3 when the offset from the Galactic Centre increases from 0° to 180°. We find that such a pronounced variation of the line flux across the sky is not observed for any line, detected with a significance higher than 3σ in the SPI background spectrum. Possible DM decay origin is not ruled out only for the unidentified spectral lines, having low (∼3σ) significance or coinciding in position with the instrumental ones. In the energy interval from 20 keV to 7 MeV, we derive restrictions on the DM decay line flux, implied by the (non-)detection of the DM decay line. For a particular DM candidate, the sterile neutrino of mass M _DM, we derive a bound on the mixing angle.