Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufmsm52a..06p&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #SM52A-06
Physics
[2704] Magnetospheric Physics / Auroral Phenomena, [2744] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetotail, [2772] Magnetospheric Physics / Plasma Waves And Instabilities, [2788] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetic Storms And Substorms
Scientific paper
The most common description of magnetotail dynamics including the generation of bursty bulk flows and plasma sheet disruption involves magnetic reconnection. This scenario, however, must deal with the problems of reconnection onset in the presence of a normal magnetic field and the inability to explain the east-west localization of the flow bursts and disruptions. An alternative mechanism involves the excitation of interchange modes that are driven by the need to return earthward magnetic flux that has been convected tailward during the growth phase of substorms. Fully kinetic 3D particle-in-cell simulations have demonstrated the existence of kinetic interchange modes with east-west wavelength of the order of the equatorial ion gyroradius and frequency about 60% of the midplane ion cyclotron frequency in regions of the midtail where the electron dynamics is adiabatic. In their nonlinear evolution the modes steepen into Rayleigh-Taylor type fingers and propagate earthward. As the structures steepen, the total magnetic flux contained within them remains constant, and the structures represent a dynamical realization of underpopulated flux tubes. The field-aligned currents associated with the head of the flows have the signature of a N-S auroral streamer. The interaction of such interchange heads with the near-Earth plasma sheet is observed in some cases to produce a violent localized disruption of the plasma sheet in which the particles are strongly energized and high speed flows are triggered both earthward and tailward. The implications of these results for substorm onset will be discussed.
Coroniti Ferdinan V.
Pritchett Philip L.
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