Physics
Scientific paper
Jan 1993
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1993phdt.........6a&link_type=abstract
Ph.D. Thesis California Univ., Los Angeles.
Physics
1
Diamagnetism, Electric Fields, Energy Transfer, Flux Density, Magnetic Fields, Magnetic Flux, Plasma Layers, Substructures, Algorithms, Convection, Flow Distribution, Statistical Distributions, Subsidence
Scientific paper
We present a series of studies that utilize observation and modeling in order to characterize transport in the earth's plasma sheet out to distances of 23 R(sub E). After a brief description of the dissertation's goals in Chapter 1, we analyze in Chapter 2 representative cases of high speed flows in the inner central plasma sheet along with the concurrent behavior of the plasma and magnetic field. We argue that such flows are organized in 10 min. time scale entities of convection enhancements that we term bursty bulk flow (BBF) events. BBF's have a substructure that is on a 1 min time scale, referred to as 'flow bursts'. BBF's represent intervals of enhanced, predominantly earthward transport of mass energy and magnetic flux. In Chapter 3, we use an algorithm to automatically detect BBF's and study their statistical properties. BBF's cause the plasma sheet to be in a more dipolarized, higher temperature state for a long time after their subsidence. Despite their short duration, BBF's can account for most of the measured earthward transport of particles, energy, and magnetic flux in the plasma sheet. The concept of BBF's as a particular state of transport in the plasma sheet is applied in Chapter 4 to the study of the non-BBF, quiet state of the inner plasma sheet. We construct the average ion velocity pattern in the quiet inner plasma sheet. We show that a semi-empirical magnetic field model of the magnetotail along with the inferred cross tail electric field and the measured average density reproduce the observed velocity averages assuming that the flow is the sum of corrotation, an E x B flow, and a model-derired diamagnetic drift Despite the qualitative agreement of the average flow pattern with our model calculations, the flow exhibits variability much larger than its average. The non-BBF flow is highly irregular and fundamentally unsteady, a reason why convection in the quiet state of the plasma sheet may be able to avoid a pressure balance inconsistency with the lobes. Chapter 5 explores whether a segregation of plasma sheet states similar to the one applied to the inner plasma sheet can also be extended to the outer plasma sheet.
Angelopoulos Vassilis
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