Bifurcations in the Heliosphere: Global-scale Coronal Pseudostreamer Evolution and the Creation of Secondary Heliospheric Current Sheets

Abstract The heliospheric current sheet (HCS) is the boundary between open magnetic fields of opposite polarity in the solar wind that connect back to their respective open-flux regions in the corona. The HCS is often described as a disklike sheet warped by the combined effects of the inclination of the magnetic equator on the Sun, solar rotation, and solar wind expansion. The HCS is an extension of the helmet streamer belt—the closed-flux region resulting from the global dipole component of the observed photospheric magnetic field. In the absence of a strong dipole, a dominant quadrupole can result in two separate HCSs. Here we report on a set of idealized, axisymmetric, solar wind simulations designed to study the transition of the single-HCS corona and inner heliosphere into a multiple-HCS configuration, run with the WindPredict-AW PLUTO MHD code. We systematically vary the relative strengths of the dipole and quadrupole contributions to the global field and show this results in the formation of a large-scale, closed-flux pseudostreamer that interacts with the ambient solar wind. We find that when the dipole and quadrupole magnitudes are approximately equal, our model corona can oscillate between a one- and two-HCS configuration on the timescale of days to weeks. We characterize the plasma dynamics of the transition of a global-scale pseudostreamer into a localized, secondary, helmet-streamer belt with its own HCS surrounding a newly opened, opposite-polarity, coronal hole. We discuss the implications of our results for solar cycle evolution and the dynamic coupling of the highly structured corona and inner heliosphere.