Spatial Structure of Plasmaspheric Plumes Observed by THEMIS

Details Spatial Structure of Plasmaspheric Plumes Observed by THEMIS Spatial Structure of Plasmaspheric Plumes Observed by THEMIS

Dec 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007agufmsm13d..03m&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2007, abstract #SM13D-03

Physics

2724 Magnetopause And Boundary Layers, 2731 Magnetosphere: Outer, 2740 Magnetospheric Configuration And Dynamics, 2760 Plasma Convection (2463), 2768 Plasmasphere

Scientific paper

During the first 6 months of the THEMIS mission, the five spacecraft were configured in a string-of-pearls that sampled the dayside magnetosphere revealing the dominance of cold plasma in this region. Although cold ions can only be detected when MP motion increases their energy in the spacecraft frame allowing penetration of the spacecraft potential, comparisons of electron density with ion density provide identification of the hidden cold ions. Spacecraft potential is also used to infer hidden cold plasma, supporting the plasma measurements. As expected, the largest cold plasma densities are observed in the post-noon sector where plasmaspheric plumes are convected to the magnetopause. These multi-spacecraft measurements offer a unique picture of the spatial and temporal structure of these plumes. Order of magnitude density variations over 100 km scales are observed indicating these plumes can be highly structured. Plume densities >10/cc near the magnetopause were observed on a dozen orbits, with one observation revealing 60/cc. Cold plasma is generally found to dominate the number density in the post-noon sector by a factor of 10-100 over the hot component. These measurements indicate that cold plasma must play a major role in magnetospheric dynamics, affecting wave dispersion relations, field line resonances, and reconnection. This paper will focus on structure revealed by the multi- satellite measurements.

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