Electrostatic Fields in Density Cavities and Their Interaction With Ions

Details Electrostatic Fields in Density Cavities and Their Interaction With Ions Electrostatic Fields in Density Cavities and Their Interaction With Ions

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufmsm31b0324d&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #SM31B-0324

Statistics

Computation

2407 Auroral Ionosphere (2704), 2451 Particle Acceleration, 2483 Wave/Particle Interactions (7867), 2487 Wave Propagation (0689, 3285, 4275, 4455, 6934), 7815 Electrostatic Structures

Scientific paper

In the auroral ionosphere, density cavities aligned along the geomagnetic field have been extensively observed by sounding rockets [1,2]. Associated with these cavities are enhanced electric fields primarily within the density gradient region. Previous rocket observations indicated that the fields were electrostatic. More recent observations indicate that these are electromagnetic fields. We have been studying, theoretically and computationally, the characteristic features of fields in density cavities. Intense localized electric fields can be generated in regions where plasma resonances (e.g., the lower hybrid or the upper hybrid resonances) exist. An appropriate description of the fields is obtained from Maxwell's equations for a cold plasma with a spatial profile. We will discuss the characteristic features of the fields obtained from such a description. An extension of the model to electromagnetic waves will be included in the presentation. The enhanced electromagnetic fields, spatially localized with transverse dimensions that are small compared to the ion Larmor radius, have been observed to transversely accelerate the ionospheric ions. We have been studying the interaction of low energy ions with localized field structures. We find that the ion dynamics is significantly different than when the ions interact with a spectrum of electrostatic plane waves [3]. Detailed analytical and numerical results describing the ion dynamics, and a comparison between the interaction of ions with localized field structures and with plane waves will be discussed. This work is supported by DoE Grant DE-FG02-91ER-54109 and by NSF Grant ATM-98-06328. [1] K.A. Lynch et al., J. Geophys. Res. 104, 28,515 (1999). [2] D.J. Knudsen et al., Geophys. Res. Lett. 26, 2933 (1999); D.J. Knudsen et al., J. Geophys. Res. 109, A04212 (2004). [2] A.K. Ram, A. Bers, and D. Benisti, J. Geophys. Res. 103, 9431 (1998).

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