Cluster multi-point look at density cavities in the Auroral Acceleration Region

Details Cluster multi-point look at density cavities in the Auroral Acceleration Region Cluster multi-point look at density cavities in the Auroral Acceleration Region

Dec 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011agufmsm51b2097m&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011, abstract #SM51B-2097

Physics

[2704] Magnetospheric Physics / Auroral Phenomena

Scientific paper

2010 marked the 10th anniversary of the ESA/NASA Cluster mission in space. During this decade, the Cluster mission has crossed a number of key regions of the Earth's magnetosphere, enabling to study the Sun-Earth connection for the first time with four point measurements. Since 2006, the orbits of the Cluster satellites are slowly evolving from a nominal polar orbit to an oblique one. Meanwhile, the perigees of their orbits are going down from 19,000 km to just a few hundred kilometres. During spring 2009, early winter 2009/2010 and late 2011, Cluster scientists could make use of this natural orbital drift to target a new key region of the magnetosphere: the Auroral Acceleration Region (AAR). We present new observations of density cavities captured simultaneously by multiple satellites in the AAR region. The estimation of the electron density itself will be first presented. The quantitative estimation of the density in these cavities is of crucial importance for different physical auroral processes. For instance, auroral kilometric radiation sources emit from plasma cavities filled by a hot and tenuous plasma. Thanks to the multiple point nature of these observations, new information can be extracted including: the size extent parallel to the magnetic field, the perpendicular density gradient on the sides of these cavities but also their association with AKR and solitary structures. Last but not least some indication about their temporal evolution will be presented. All these new physical parameters are key to model density cavities more accurately in order to better understand the role they play in the AAR.

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