Physics
Scientific paper
May 2001
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001agusm..sm32a21r&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2001, abstract #SM32A-21
Physics
2712 Electric Fields (2411), 2740 Magnetospheric Configuration And Dynamics, 2799 General Or Miscellaneous
Scientific paper
The rotation of the Earth's dipole magnetic field produces a corotation electric field in the nonrotating frame of reference. A quick calculation implies that this field might arise from the relative motion of an observer in the nonrotating frame and the motion of rotating magnetic field lines. However, upon applying Faraday's Law one finds that total time rate of change of the magnetic field as seen in the nonrotating frame is zero due to the azimuthal symmetry of the dipole. Therefore, classical EM theory(1) predicts a zero corotation electric field in the nonrotating frame for a vacuum. This conundrum has been traditionally treated in the following manner(2,3). 1) Start with a vacuum state with no conductors and plasma present. The transformation between E (the electric field in the nonrotating frame) and E' (the electric field in the rotating frame)implies that in the rotating frame E' is nonzero while E = 0. 2) In the presence of a thin conducting spherical shell (the ionosphere) polarization charges form in the shell due to the magnetic force on the electrons. A polarization electric field Ep is created such that in the idealized case the shell has a uniform electric potential. This Ep has a component along the magnetic field lines outside the shell. 3) Plasma will polarize along B, thus canceling the parallel component of Ep which allows the potential on the shell to be mapped along the magnetic field lines setting E' = 0. From the transformation equation E is now nonzero. This is the electric field required in the nonrotating frame for the plasma to corotate with the dipole. The presence of the corotation electric field is not a local result, but a nonlocal effect that requires the presence of an ionosphere and a conducting plasma. (1) W.K.H. Panofsky and M. Phillips, Classical Electricity and Magnetism, Addison-Wesley, 1956. (2) H. Alfven and C.-G. Falthammar, Cosmical Electrodynamics, 2nd ed., Oxford Press, 1963. (3) E.W.Hones and J.E.Bergeson, J. Geophys. Res. , 70, 4951, 1965.
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