Physics
Scientific paper
Mar 1998
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1998jgr...103.4315s&link_type=abstract
Journal of Geophysical Research, Volume 103, Issue A3, p. 4315-4326
Physics
39
Ionosphere: Auroral Ionosphere, Ionosphere: Electric Fields, Ionosphere: Plasma Temperature And Density, Magnetospheric Physics: Current Systems
Scientific paper
Multiscale structure of field-aligned currents and plasma density records are analyzed with multiresolution wavelet technique. We show that field-aligned currents measured by Freja in the auroral region have a spectrum of scales from ~500km down to about a hundred meters. The intensity of currents has a maximum of ~100-300μAm-2 at the subkilometer scales. The locations of small-scale currents (corresponding presumably to discrete auroral structures) is not coincident neither with strong macroscopic density gradients, nor with the most intense large-scale currents. These structures are observed to cluster inside medium scale density cavities and represent most likely interference patterns of short (λ⊥>=c/ωpe) inertial Alfvén waves. At kilometer scales the energetic electrons (30 eV to 30 keV) carry less than ~20% of the magnetometer current, indicating that thermal electrons are the major current carriers. We discuss also vector polarization of the magnetic perturbations at various scales which may be used as a tool for resolving polarization patterns and sense of rotation for Alfvén waves, vortices, and current filaments.
Potemra T.
Stasiewicz Krzysztof
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