Initiation of Ballooning Instability by Reconnection in Near-Earth Plasma Sheet: Analysis of a THEMIS Event

Physics

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

2744 Magnetotail, 2752 Mhd Waves And Instabilities (2149, 6050, 7836), 2753 Numerical Modeling, 2764 Plasma Sheet, 2790 Substorms

Scientific paper

This study explores the scenario in which a robust ballooning instability is initiated from its linear stage by reconnection process in the near-Earth plasma sheet leading to a substorm onset. Previous analyses based on the near-tail configurations obtained from 2D Hall MHD simulations of substorm onset process found that the near-tail region becomes most ballooning unstable in the so-called impulsive growth phase. Recently, we analyzed the ballooning properties of the near-Earth plasma sheet in the presence of magnetospheric convection during the March 23, 2007 THEMIS substorm event. Using the solar wind data from WIND observations for the substorm event as an input at dayside in OpenGGCM simulations, we have reconstructed a sequence of global magnetospheric configurations around substorm onset, matching closely the observation in terms of onset timing. An approximate local dispersion relation for ballooning instability in the presence of flow is evaluated for the tail region when the configuration attains quasi steady-state conditions. Our analysis of the near-Earth tail region evolution during this substorm event starts to reveal the correlation between the breaching of the ballooning stability condition and the substorm onset, in both time and location. The analysis also indicates that the magnetospheric convection appears to have little direct effect on the ballooning instability itself; rather it plays a profound role by engaging the interaction between reconnection and ballooning instability in the plasma sheet. Research supported by U.S. NSF Grant No. ATM-0542954.

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

Initiation of Ballooning Instability by Reconnection in Near-Earth Plasma Sheet: Analysis of a THEMIS Event does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Initiation of Ballooning Instability by Reconnection in Near-Earth Plasma Sheet: Analysis of a THEMIS Event, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Initiation of Ballooning Instability by Reconnection in Near-Earth Plasma Sheet: Analysis of a THEMIS Event will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1401280

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.