Physics
Scientific paper
May 1995
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1995georl..22.1145v&link_type=abstract
Geophysical Research Letters (ISSN 0094-8276), vol. 22, no. 9, p. 1145-1147
Physics
2
Earth Magnetosphere, Field Strength, Geomagnetic Tail, Magnetohydrodynamic Flow, Magnetohydrodynamic Waves, Magnetopause, Birkeland Currents, Boundary Layers, Interplanetary Magnetic Fields, Polar Cusps
Scientific paper
The merging of magnetospheric and interplanetary magnetic fields in the nose region of the magnetosphere generates two pairs of finite amplitude Alfven waves; the two interior ones propagate down to the ionosphere, and the two exterior ones propagate into the incoming magnetosheath plasma and thus can be identified with the magnetopause in the dayside.The magnetopause on the nightside is not a continuation of that on the dayside but is a distinct surface formed by a separate Alfven wave generated near the down-stream edge of the dayside polar cusp. This multiple-branch model also explains the boundary of the exterior cusp (identified with the continuation of the dayside magnetopause) and accounts for the non-stagnent flow within the the exterior cusp (the flow simply proceeds across the nightside magnetopause into the plasma mantle region). Where the two branches are adjacent to the magnetotail, their spatial separation can be estimated as typically no more than about 2 R(sub E), not likely to have been noticed unless specifically looked for. A possible mechanism for generating the nightside Alfven wave is the expansion of plasma within the polar cusp as the flux tubes are advected into the rapidly increasing volume of the magnetotail.
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