Proton aurora in the cusp during southward IMF

Details Proton aurora in the cusp during southward IMF Proton aurora in the cusp during southward IMF

Jul 2003

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003jgra..108.1277f&link_type=abstract

Journal of Geophysical Research Space Physics, Volume 108, Issue A7, pp. SMP 6-1, CiteID 1277, DOI 10.1029/2003JA009861

Physics

Plasma Physics

10

Magnetospheric Physics: Auroral Phenomena (2407), Magnetospheric Physics: Magnetopause, Cusp, And Boundary Layers, Magnetospheric Physics: Solar Wind/Magnetosphere Interactions, Space Plasma Physics: Magnetic Reconnection, Ionosphere: Particle Precipitation

Scientific paper

One of the most distinct aurorae in the high-latitude dayside region occurs at the footprint of the cusp. The Spectrographic Imager SI-12 channel on the IMAGE spacecraft allows for long-duration observations of the proton aurora in this region and thus enables morphological and quantitative studies of the behavior of the proton aurora under different external solar wind conditions. Here we extend an earlier study of the proton aurora in the cusp during northward interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) conditions [ Frey et al., 2002] to southward IMF conditions. We find a very similar dependence of the cusp aurora's location in magnetic local time (MLT) on the IMF B y component, with locations at prenoon for negative B y and postnoon for positive B y . We also confirm the previously established dependence of the proton aurora brightness on the solar wind dynamic pressure. However, for similar solar wind pressures the proton aurora is brighter for the southward IMF case than for the northward IMF case. The other major difference between southward and northward IMF conditions is the very strong dependence of the latitude location on the magnitude of the IMF B z for southward IMF. We discuss both differences in terms of the location of the reconnection site at the magnetopause that is connected to the ionosphere along cusp magnetic field lines.

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