Average Plasma Vorticity Field in the Near-Earth Plasma Sheet

Details Average Plasma Vorticity Field in the Near-Earth Plasma Sheet Average Plasma Vorticity Field in the Near-Earth Plasma Sheet

Dec 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005agufmsm33b0455n&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2005, abstract #SM33B-0455

Physics

2409 Current Systems (2721), 2431 Ionosphere/Magnetosphere Interactions (2736), 2744 Magnetotail, 2764 Plasma Sheet, 2784 Solar Wind/Magnetosphere Interactions

Scientific paper

Understanding the processes which generate field-aligned currents in the nightside magnetosphere is one of the important issues in the solar-terrestrial physics. Flow vorticity in the plasma sheet is considered to be one of the sources of the field-aligned currents. In this paper, a two-dimensional pattern of plasma vorticity in the near-Earth plasma sheet (R = 9-30 Re) is derived from long term plasma measurement by the Geotail spacecraft. The Geocentric Solar Wind (GSW) coordinate system is used in this study. We use the data during non-storm periods (symH > -30 nT) to avoid intense magnetospheric disturbances. Fast flows such as bursty bulk flows are also excluded from the database. Vorticity in the vicinity of the Earth is northward (southward) in the dawn (dusk) side. Vorticity in the low-latitude boundary layer is southward (northward) in the dawn (dusk) side due to flow shears. Calculating the vorticity generation rate S (=v · grad Ω) from flow velocity v and vorticity Ω, we found that spatial distribution of S is consistent with the Region1/Region2 current system. The plasma data are also sorted by the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) direction, and the dependence of vorticity on IMF is also discussed.

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