The role of the magnetosonic Mach number on the evolution of Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices

We review the main results of our previous works, in which we have investigated the development of the Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instability in the transitional regime from sub magnetosonic to super-magnetosonic by varying the solar wind velocity, in conditions typical of those observed at the Earth's magnetopause flanks. In super-magnetosonic regimes, we show that the vortices produced by the development of the KH instability act as an obstacle in the plasma flow and may generate quasi-perpendicular magnetosonic shock structures extending well outside the region of velocity shear.