Laboratory Visualization of Global Magnetic Topology

Details Laboratory Visualization of Global Magnetic Topology Laboratory Visualization of Global Magnetic Topology

Dec 2001

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001agufmsm31b0781p&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2001, abstract #SM31B-0781

Other

2431 Ionosphere/Magnetosphere Interactions (2736), 2451 Particle Acceleration, 2736 Magnetosphere/Ionosphere Interactions, 2794 Instruments And Techniques

Scientific paper

Magnetic fields have been difficult to image since their invention by Michael Faraday. A common introductory physics demonstration uses iron filings suspended in glycerin to image the 3-D dipole field around a bar magnet. However helpful this display, the filings have the discouraging property of modifying the field they incarnate. It is with even greater difficulty that the magnetospheric fields are imaged, thus the excitement over energetic neutral atom images of trapped ions, providing the first global images of the ghostly magnetic fields. We demonstrate an even simpler technique of observing the magnetic field via photons produced by collisional excitation of the background neutral gas in a laboratory vacuum chamber. The intensity is then directly proportional to the ion density, giving direct evidence of magnetic topology and structure. Several unique trapping regions in the laboratory analog "double-dipole" magnetosphere were uncovered with this technique. In addition, optical emissions are enhanced by field-aligned potentials which can illuminate individual field lines. An laboratory "substorm" triggered by field-aligned potentials is presented, demonstrating this approach. Finally, we present several ways in which field-aligned discharges were produced in vitro, both statically and dynamically. If the laboratory analog holds for the magnetosphere, we have another tool for identifying the two ends of a field line.

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