The UAH Spinning Terrella Experiment: A Laboratory Model of Geomagnetic Storms

Physics

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2720 Energetic Particles, Trapped, 2730 Magnetosphere--Inner, 2778 Ring Current

Scientific paper

The UAH Spinning Terrella Experiment demonstrated that hot plasma in the vicinity of strong magnetic gradients, can generate not unreasonable space charge potentials1. For example, a 5kG Nd-B magnet of 1 cm radius was shown to have a ~10 nF capacitance when embedded in a 100 mTorr and supplied with ions by a DC glow discharge. When the voltage on the capacitor exceeds the breakdown electric field of the background gas, field-aligned arcs are generated that dump the charge in about 30μ s. Images (and movies if possible) of this phenomena will be shown. This system can be scaled to the Earth's dipole, where it predicts a similar discharge during geomagnetic storms due to the injection of plasmasheet ions into the ring current2. While not the cause of the storm, this mechanism explains many of the related phenomena of geomagnetic storms, including localized X-rays, O+\ gyrofrequency Pc1 waves, explosive growth of Dst, two timescales for recovery, RC oxygen content, and field-aligned particle beams. In addition, the model predicts that dipole tilt and seasonal variations in the ionospheric conductivity may control the magnitude of Dst. We argue this point statistically and relate it to the debated ``Russell-McPherron'' effect. 1Sheldon, R. and S. Spurrier, Phys. Plasmas, 2001.\2Sheldon, R. Adv. Sp. Res, 25, pp2347-2356, 2000.

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