CURRENT SHEET THINNING AND ENTROPY CONSTRAINTS DURING THE SUBSTORM GROWTH PHASE

Details CURRENT SHEET THINNING AND ENTROPY CONSTRAINTS DURING THE SUBSTORM GROWTH PHASE CURRENT SHEET THINNING AND ENTROPY CONSTRAINTS DURING THE SUBSTORM GROWTH PHASE

Dec 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agufmsm52a..07o&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2009, abstract #SM52A-07

Physics

[2744] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetotail, [2753] Magnetospheric Physics / Numerical Modeling, [2784] Magnetospheric Physics / Solar Wind/Magnetosphere Interactions, [2790] Magnetospheric Physics / Substorms

Scientific paper

A typical property during the growth phase of geomagnetic substorms is the thinning of the near-Earth current sheet, most pronounced in the region between 6 and 15 R_E. We propose that the cause for the current sheet thinning is convection from the midnight tail region to the dayside to replenish magnetospheric magnetic flux which is eroded at the dayside as a result of dayside reconnection. Adiabatic convection from the near-Earth tail region toward the dayside must conserve the entropy on magnetic field lines. This constraint prohibits a source of the magnetic flux from a region further out in the magnetotail. Thus the near-Earth tail region is increasingly depleted of magnetic flux (the Erickson and Wolf [1980] problem) with entropy matching that of flux tubes that are eroded on the dayside. It is proposed that the magnetic flux depletion in the near-Earth tail forces the formation of thin current layers. The process is documented by three-dimensional MHD simulations. It is shown that the simulations yield a time scale, location, and other general characteristics of the current sheet evolution during the substorm growth phase.

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