Equatorial Waves in the Inner Tail Current Sheet: Geotail Observations

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2744 Magnetotail, 2752 Mhd Waves And Instabilities, 2764 Plasma Sheet

Scientific paper

Three second average magnetic field data from more than 50 Geotail perigee passes through the inner magnetotail current sheet in 1997-99 at 9-12 Re have been scanned. Two passes stand out due to the presence of quasi-sinusodial transverse waves with peak to peak amplitudes up to 10 nT and periods of one to two minutes. The waves occur during otherwise quiet intervals and they are confined to within 0.5 Re of the equatorial current sheet. Since the equatorial background fields are northward with magnitudes near 20 nT, the waves are occurring at about half the oxygen gyrofrequency. The waves are elliptically polarized, often in a left hand sense for several consecutive cycles, but sometimes changing to right handed. Electric field waves with amplitudes up to at least 1 mV/m accompany the magnetic field variations on one pass but they have an additional higher frequency component absent in the magnetic field. Electric field waves are much weaker on the other pass despite comparable magnetic field variations. The waves may be ion cyclotron waves associated with oxygen since they occur in high beta plasmas, have a frequency about half the oxygen gyrofrequency, and both the wave events occur during geomagnetically quiet intervals during the recovery phase of magnetic storms when oxygen is likely to be present. On other Geotail passes through the same region, fluctuations with similar periods occur in the field magnitude and may be slow mode or mirror mode fluctuations.

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