🔬 Category

physics.space-ph

179 papers

Space physics explores the dynamic environment surrounding our planet and the wider solar system, focusing on how charged particles, magnetic fields, and solar winds interact with celestial bodies. This field helps us understand phenomena like auroras, space weather that can disrupt satellites, and the fundamental behavior of plasma in the vacuum of space. It bridges the gap between astronomy and particle physics, revealing the invisible forces that shape our cosmic neighborhood.

At Gist.Science, we process every new preprint in this category as it appears on arXiv, ensuring you get immediate access to the latest research. For each paper, we provide both a detailed technical summary for experts and a plain-language explanation that makes complex concepts understandable for everyone. Below are the latest space physics papers from arXiv, curated and simplified for your reading.

High-Precision Ground Characterization of Test-Mass Magnetic Properties for the Taiji Gravitational Wave Mission via a Physics-Informed Neural Framework

This paper proposes an AI-enhanced Differentiable Weighted Least Squares (AI-WLS) framework that combines a dilated residual network with a physical solver to achieve high-precision characterization of test-mass magnetic properties by effectively suppressing non-stationary noise in torsion-pendulum measurements for the Taiji gravitational wave mission.

Chang Liu, Qiong Deng, Huadong Li, Liwei Yang, Xiaodong Peng, Ziren Luo, Yuzhu Zhang, Chen Gao, Xiaotong Wei, Minghui Du, Zihao Xiao, Peng Xu, Bo Liang, Zhi Wang, Li-e Qiang2026-04-28🔬 physics.app-ph

Observation of a Knotted Electron Diffusion Region in Earth's Magnetotail Reconnection

Using Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission data, this study reports the first observation of a non-coplanar, knotted electron diffusion region in Earth's magnetotail that deviates significantly from the ion diffusion region, revealing complex three-dimensional effects and multiscale coupling during magnetic reconnection.

Xinmin Li, Chuanfei Dong, Hantao Ji, Chi Zhang, Liang Wang, Barbara Giles, Hongyang Zhou, Rui Chen, Yi Qi2026-04-24🔭 astro-ph

Spectral Properties and Energy Injection in Mercury's Magnetotail Current Sheet

This study analyzes MESSENGER magnetic field data from 370 Mercury magnetotail current sheets to reveal that most events exhibit turbulent spectra with a dawn-dusk asymmetry, where the dawnside shows more developed turbulence and energy injection occurring at ion scales rather than within a classical inertial range.

Xinmin Li, Chuanfei Dong, Liang Wang, Sae Aizawa, Lina Z. Hadid, Chi Zhang, Hongyang Zhou, James A. Slavin, Jiawei Gao, Mirko Stumpo, Wei Zhang2026-04-24🔭 astro-ph

Properties and Radial Evolution of Solar Wind Turbulence Near Mercury's Orbit

This study analyzes over 17,000 hours of MESSENGER magnetic field data to reveal that while solar wind turbulence near Mercury's orbit maintains a stable, Alfvénic inertial range, its kinetic scales exhibit significant radial evolution characterized by shallower spectral slopes and increasing compressibility as heliocentric distance increases.

Xinmin Li (Center for Space Physics and Department of Astronomy, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA), Chuanfei Dong (Center for Space Physics and Department of Astronomy, Boston University, Bost (…)2026-04-24🔬 physics

Polytropic stellar wind models with strongly localized heating

This paper generalizes polyropic stellar wind models to include more realistic non-adiabatic behavior under strongly localized heating, demonstrating that the required energy is plausible and offering potential explanations for variable wind streams and acoustic waves observed by the Parker Solar Probe.

L. Westrich (Theoretical Physics IV, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany, Centre for Computational Helio Studies, Faculty of Natural Sciences and Medicine, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia (…)2026-04-23🔭 astro-ph

Modeling hot, anisotropic ion beams in the solar wind motivated by the Parker Solar Probe observations near perihelia

Motivated by Parker Solar Probe observations of complex, anisotropic ion velocity distributions near the Sun, this study employs nonlinear hybrid models to demonstrate that wave-particle interactions driven by ion-cyclotron and magnetosonic instabilities play a crucial role in transferring magnetic energy to particle motion, thereby heating the anisotropic solar wind plasma.

Leon Ofman, Yogesh, Scott A Boardsen, Parisa Mostafavi, Lan K Jian, Viacheslav M Sadykov, Kristopher Klein, Mihailo Martinovic2026-04-21🔭 astro-ph

Automated Classification of Plasma Regions at Mars Using Machine Learning

This study demonstrates that a convolutional neural network (CNN) trained on MAVEN SWIA ion energy spectra outperforms a multilayer perceptron in accurately and automatically classifying solar wind, magnetosheath, and induced magnetosphere regions around Mars, offering an efficient framework for large-scale plasma analysis.

Yilan Qin, Chuanfei Dong, Hongyang Zhou, Chi Zhang, Kaichun Xu, Jiawei Gao, Simin Shekarpaz, Xinmin Li, Liang Wang2026-04-21🔬 physics

Inferring lunar wake potentials from electron phase space densities

This paper introduces a Hamiltonian inversion method that overcomes challenges posed by solar wind strahl asymmetry and ion acoustic shocks to accurately infer spatial electric potential profiles in the lunar wake from electron phase space density measurements, a technique validated by simulations and applied to ARTEMIS observations.

Xin An, Shaosui Xu, Vassilis Angelopoulos, Terry Z. Liu, Andrew R. Poppe, Jasper S. Halekas, Ferdinand Plaschke2026-04-21🔬 physics

On the curlometer measurement of field-aligned and perpendicular currents in low Earth orbit: Swarm observations and whole geospace simulations

This study utilizes Swarm spacecraft observations and whole geospace simulations to demonstrate that field-aligned currents exhibit significant non-stationarity at scales below 100 km and that accurate current density measurements require high-quality four-point tetrahedral configurations to avoid spurious perpendicular currents caused by numerical instability.

R Gajewski, RT Desai, B Hnat, D Lin, MW Dunlop, M Fillion, G Hulot, Shreedevi P R, M-T Walach, E Panov, J-M Leger, T Jager, D Fischer, W Magnes, JA Blake, T Etchells2026-04-21🔬 physics

Towards a Fully Automated Pipeline for Short-Term Forecasting of In Situ Coronal Mass Ejection Magnetic Field Structure

This paper presents and evaluates a fully automated pipeline that integrates remote sensing, deep learning, and iterative flux rope modeling to provide real-time, short-term forecasts of the magnetic field structure of coronal mass ejections at L1, demonstrating promising accuracy while highlighting limitations due to event complexity.

Hannah T. Rüdisser, Emma E. Davies, Ute V. Amerstorfer, Christian Möstl, Eva Weiler, Andreas J. Weiss, Justin Le Louëdec, Martin A. Reiss, Gautier Nguyen2026-04-20🔭 astro-ph