A Glimpse of Invisible Cold Ions in the Mid-Night Plasma Sheet: GEOTAIL Observations During Solar Umbra

Details A Glimpse of Invisible Cold Ions in the Mid-Night Plasma Sheet: GEOTAIL Observations During Solar Umbra A Glimpse of Invisible Cold Ions in the Mid-Night Plasma Sheet: GEOTAIL Observations During Solar Umbra

Dec 2001

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001agufmsm11b0816s&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2001, abstract #SM11B-0816

Physics

2700 Magnetospheric Physics, 2736 Magnetosphere/Ionosphere Interactions, 2740 Magnetospheric Configuration And Dynamics, 2764 Plasma Sheet

Scientific paper

It is well known that a large amount of cold ions typically below a few tens of eV are flowing out from the polar ionosphere as the polar wind. However, it is difficult to investigate the fate of the cold ions in the magnetosphere observationally, since spacecraft in the magnetotail usually become positively charged up to a few tens of eV due to photoelectrons without some potential control methods, and we will miss the ions below the spacecraft potential even if they exist. Trajectory tracings of ions outflowing from the polar ionosphere in empirical magnetospheric models have predicted that these ions get energized upon the entry into the plasma sheet where the gyroradius of ions become comparable to the field line curvature. Thus it is generally considered that cold ionospheric ions can no longer be cold in the night-side plasma sheet and most of them contribute to the hot plasma sheet ions. On the contrary, the GEOTAIL spacecraft sometimes observed extremely cold ions in the near-Earth plasma sheet (XGSM=-8 to -18 Re), when it entered in the solar umbra. In the solar umbra, termination of photoelectron supply makes spacecraft negatively charged and ambient cold ions become detectable attracted by the negative spacecraft potential. Among all solar umbra events in 1995-1998, about a quarter of the events showed this kind of cold ion acceleration. In this study, we will investigate properties of these cold ions in the mid-night plasma sheet in order to understand why these ions can exist in the plasma sheet without getting energized.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

A Glimpse of Invisible Cold Ions in the Mid-Night Plasma Sheet: GEOTAIL Observations During Solar Umbra 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 A Glimpse of Invisible Cold Ions in the Mid-Night Plasma Sheet: GEOTAIL Observations During Solar Umbra, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and A Glimpse of Invisible Cold Ions in the Mid-Night Plasma Sheet: GEOTAIL Observations During Solar Umbra will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1382536