Speaker
Description
Global geomagnetic indices such as AE, AL, and SYM-H are widely used to study solar-wind–magnetosphere coupling, but they compress a spatially structured system into a small number of time series. This compression can obscure where, when, and how solar-wind information appears in local ground magnetic perturbations. In this project, we develop a station-resolved framework for analyzing local information transfer in the coupled solar-wind–magnetosphere–ionosphere system using the Al Shidi and Pulkkinen SWMF ground magnetometer simulation dataset. The
dataset includes event-level SWMF log files with solar-wind/input quantities and simulated global quantities, as well as station files containing observed and simulated magnetic perturbation components at individual ground magnetometer stations.
For each storm event, we align solar-wind driver variables with both observed and simulated station-level magnetic perturbations. We then compute traditional lagged correlation maps and compare them with information-theoretic measures such as mutual information and transfer entropy. This allows us to ask not only where the solar wind is correlated with local geomagnetic response, but where it provides predictive information beyond the local response’s own recent history. By applying the same workflow to observed and simulated station data, we can evaluate whether SWMF reproduces the spatial distribution, timing, and driver dependence of local geomagnetic information flow.
In parallel with this classical analysis, we plan to explore whether similar information-flow and observability questions can be formulated using quantum-computing approaches, including small-scale implementations with Qiskit and IBM Quantum resources. This component will initially be exploratory: rather than claiming quantum advantage, we aim to test whether quantum or quantum-inspired representations can provide useful alternative ways to encode, compare, or classify solar-wind–magnetosphere coupling states. In this way, the project serves both as a station-level extension of traditional geospace model validation and a first step towards future quantum-assisted analysis of heliophysics data.