Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufmsm52a..04a&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #SM52A-04
Physics
2744 Magnetotail, 2753 Numerical Modeling, 2764 Plasma Sheet, 2790 Substorms
Scientific paper
On March 1, 2008 four THEMIS spacecraft were aligned radially in the near-Earth plasma sheet during a major magnetospheric substorm. The outer probes P1 and P2 located at 23 RE and 16RE, observed evidence of reconnection prior to substorm onset as well as inverse dispersion in which the flux of low energy ions increases first. Shortly after onset the inner probes P3 and P4 located at 9.3RE and 8RE respectively observed large increases in both thermal and energetic ions. The energetic ions reached energies as large as 500 keV. To explain the observations at both the outer and inner probes we have carried out a simulation study in which we first ran a global magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation of the magnetosphere and then launched both solar wind and ionospheric ions into the electric and magnetic fields obtained from the MHD simulation. The solar wind source included both plasma mantle ions and low latitude boundary layer (LLBL) ions. In the MHD simulation like the observations the substorm was initiated by reconnection in the region between 15-20RE which was then followed by dipolarization in the near Earth tail. Results from the particle calculations show evidence of inverse dispersion near the outer probes and large ion acceleration in the near earth tail. The particle simulations reproduce the observed energy flux spectrograms and number density with such fidelity that we have used them to locate the sources of the ions observed by the THEMIS spacecraft. Surprisingly during this substorm the major source of the ions observed by THEMIS is the LLBL and not the plasma mantle. In addition the ionosphere supplied a small but not negligible component of the plasma sheet population. The very energetic ions observed by P3 and P4 were accelerated by non-adiabatic motion in the induced and convection electric fields.
Angelopoulos Vassilis
Ashour-Abdalla Maha
Bosqued J.
El-Alaoui Mostafa
Peroomian Vahé
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