Detection and Statistics of large-scale Sector Boundary Crossings in the Solar Wind: The SBCross Catalog
Abstract
Heliospheric sector boundary crossings (SBCs), composed of the Heliospheric Current Sheet (HCS), Heliospheric Plasma Sheet (HPS), and surrounding plasma halo, represent fundamental structures in the solar wind that influence interplanetary dynamics and space weather. We present the \textsc{SBCross} catalog, an automated, publicly available database containing 1,076 SBC events derived from in-situ observations spanning more than 30 years (1995--2026), covering Solar Cycles 23 and 24 alongside the rising and maximum phases of Solar Cycle 25. By combining interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) and 255~eV suprathermal electron pitch angle distributions (PAD) data, our algorithm reliably captures large-scale polarity transitions, with 76% of detected SBCs exhibiting clear HPS signatures (β> 1, npeak > 10 cm−3). Across the catalog, we find an average occurrence rate of ≈ 2.6 events per Carrington rotation, a median event duration of ≈ 9.0\,hours, and a median physical thickness of ≈ 7.4 × 106\,km. Furthermore, approximately ≈ 15% of detected SBCs interact with interplanetary coronal mass ejections (CMEs) on average, with this proportion rising up to 33% during solar maximum. These CME-associated events exhibit systematically longer durations (median of $10.0$\,hours), 54% larger physical thicknesses, and higher average solar wind velocities. Notably, all high-velocity SBC events (> 600 km s−1) are exclusively driven by CME interactions, demonstrating local plasma pile-up and structural entanglement resulting from fast CMEs overtaking the ambient slow background. The \textsc{SBCross} catalog serves as an updated successor to the classic SBC list by L. Svalgaard, delivering a standardized, open-access resource for the heliophysics community to systematically investigate sector boundary transitions.
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BibTeX
@misc{heinemann2026detection,
title = {{Detection and Statistics of large-scale Sector Boundary Crossings in the Solar Wind: The SBCross Catalog}},
author = {Stephan G. Heinemann and Manuela Temmer and Mathew Owens and Emilia Kilpua and Charles Farrugia and Daniel Price},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.28139},
eprint = {2610.28139},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.28139},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Detection and Statistics of large-scale Sector Boundary Crossings in the Solar Wind: The SBCross Catalog
AU - Stephan G. Heinemann
AU - Manuela Temmer
AU - Mathew Owens
AU - Emilia Kilpua
AU - Charles Farrugia
AU - Daniel Price
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/23
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.28139
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.28139
AB - Heliospheric sector boundary crossings (SBCs), composed of the Heliospheric Current Sheet (HCS), Heliospheric Plasma Sheet (HPS), and surrounding plasma halo, represent fundamental structures in the solar wind that influence interplanetary dynamics and space weather. We present the \textsc{SBCross} catalog, an automated, publicly available database containing 1,076 SBC events derived from in-situ observations spanning more than 30 years (1995--2026), covering Solar Cycles 23 and 24 alongside the rising and maximum phases of Solar Cycle 25. By combining interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) and 255~eV suprathermal electron pitch angle distributions (PAD) data, our algorithm reliably captures large-scale polarity transitions, with 76% of detected SBCs exhibiting clear HPS signatures (β> 1, n_peak > 10 cm^−3). Across the catalog, we find an average occurrence rate of ≈ 2.6 events per Carrington rotation, a median event duration of ≈ 9.0\,hours, and a median physical thickness of ≈ 7.4 × 10^6\,km. Furthermore, approximately ≈ 15% of detected SBCs interact with interplanetary coronal mass ejections (CMEs) on average, with this proportion rising up to 33% during solar maximum. These CME-associated events exhibit systematically longer durations (median of $10.0$\,hours), 54% larger physical thicknesses, and higher average solar wind velocities. Notably, all high-velocity SBC events (> 600 km s^−1) are exclusively driven by CME interactions, demonstrating local plasma pile-up and structural entanglement resulting from fast CMEs overtaking the ambient slow background. The \textsc{SBCross} catalog serves as an updated successor to the classic SBC list by L. Svalgaard, delivering a standardized, open-access resource for the heliophysics community to systematically investigate sector boundary transitions.
ER -