O+ transport across the polar cap

Details O+ transport across the polar cap O+ transport across the polar cap

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufmsm33d..03e&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #SM33D-03

Physics

2736 Magnetosphere/Ionosphere Interactions (2431), 2776 Polar Cap Phenomena, 2784 Solar Wind/Magnetosphere Interactions

Scientific paper

The plasma sheet, inner magnetosphere, and high latitude magnetosphere all contain significant amounts of O+ ions during active times. Singly charged oxygen ions unambiguously come from the ionosphere making them an excellent tracer species. As the solar wind dynamic pressure increases, the O+ density in the in the cleft, high altitude polar cap, and plasma sheet also increases. We test the "cleft ion fountain" model, which asserts that O+ ions escape from the cleft, cross the polar cap, and then enter the plasma sheet against a mo of outflows originating from the entire polar cap. We use observations of O+ transport across the polar cap from TIDE polar cap ion outflow measurements. The Tsyganenko magnetic field model, driven with ACE solar wind parameters is used to provide magnetic mapping and organization of the observations. We calculate the distance between the cleft and the foot-points of magnetic field lines mapped from the Polar spacecraft along the noon-midnight meridian. Using the observed outflow speed and magnetic field line length we calculate travel time for the ions. We then plot the distance from the cleft versus the travel time for an entire pass. For O+ this plot is quite linear, and the slope of the line is the average convection speed of the magnetic field lines across the polar cap. The convection speed we determined is consistent with the convection speed measured in the ionosphere. We conclude that O+ ions emanating principally from the cleft are transported across the polar cap, and these O+ ions have access to the ring current and plasma sheet.

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