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Abstract

Magnetopause is a principal boundary dividing the space controlled by the Earth magnetic field from the incoming solar wind that carries frozen-in interplanetary magnetic field (IMF). Although the magnetopause is often treated as a more or less simple 2D surface, interactions of these two environments lead to creation of boundary layers on both sides of the magnetopause and these layers are filled with a mixture of the magnetospheric and solar wind (magnetosheath) plasma. Mixing of these two plasma populations is facilitated by magnetic reconnection and its rate is controlled, among other factors, by the magnetic shear across the magnetopause. The Earth magnetic field is oriented northward at the subsolar region and thus the great majority of studies deal with the influence of the north-south IMF component on formation of the magnetopause boundary layers. However, pure northward or southward IMF orientation is rather rare and thus the talk surveys results obtained in course of last decades with motivation to stress out that all IMF components should be taken into account and each of them modifies the formation of magnetopause boundary layers its own way. A specific attention will be devoted to the radial IMF conditions and to contribution of processes in the inner magnetosphere on the boundary layer formation and to pressure balance across the whole magnetopause system.