Multi-Scale Turbulence in a 2-Dimensional Current Sheet Model

Details Multi-Scale Turbulence in a 2-Dimensional Current Sheet Model Multi-Scale Turbulence in a 2-Dimensional Current Sheet Model

May 2001

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001agusm..sm31a11k&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2001, abstract #SM31A-11

Physics

2740 Magnetospheric Configuration And Dynamics, 2788 Storms And Substorms, 3220 Nonlinear Dynamics, 3230 Numerical Solutions

Scientific paper

ISEE and GEOTAIL observations have revealed a complex plasma sheet containing strong turbulence, fast flows, and localized reconnection in the region where substorm onset is thought to occur. The relationship between these local phenomena and the global substorm remains uncertain. Following the original suggestion of Chang [Phys. Plasmas, 1999 and references therein], Klimas et al. [JGR, 2000] have suggested that localized reconnection, with the associated fast flows and induced turbulence, plays the role of "avalanches" in a self-organized critical (SOC) plasma sheet. Within this viewpoint, avalanches occur sporadically in time over a broad range of sizes with the maximum system-wide avalanche being the substorm, smaller avalanches being pseudo-breakups, and the smallest BBFs or fast flows. New observational evidence continues to support this viewpoint. Lui et al. [GRL, 2000] have shown that auroral excitation exhibits scale-free size and power distributions. Based on the work of Fairfield et al. [JGR, 1999], Lyons et al. [JGR, 1999], and Ieda et al. [JGR, 2000] we assume that these excitations may be mapped to a scale-free distribution of disturbances ("avalanches") in the plasma sheet. The behavior of a 2-dimensional MHD current sheet model, coupled to an idealized current-driven instability that produces localized anomalous resistivity when and where the current density exceeds a critical value, will be demonstrated and discussed. The model is driven by convection of plasma and magnetic flux into a field reversal region and it unloads through the ejection of plasma and flux though an open boundary following field line reconnection and annihilation in the field reversal. The dynamics of this process will be discussed within the framework of the SOC paradigm.

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