Modeling the inner magnetosphere: The asymmetric ring current and Region 2 Birkeland currents revisited

Details Modeling the inner magnetosphere: The asymmetric ring current and Region 2 Birkeland currents revisited Modeling the inner magnetosphere: The asymmetric ring current and Region 2 Birkeland currents revisited

Dec 2000

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2000jgr...10527739t&link_type=abstract

Journal of Geophysical Research, Volume 105, Issue A12, p. 27739-27754

Physics

17

Magnetospheric Physics: Current Systems, Magnetospheric Physics: Magnetosphere-Inner, Magnetospheric Physics: Numerical Modeling, Magnetospheric Physics: Ring Current

Scientific paper

A quantitative model is developed of the inner magnetospheric magnetic field, combining the effects of the azimuthally asymmetric ring current with those of field-aligned currents, due to azimuthal variation of the plasma pressure. The axisymmetric part of the model ring current was derived from average observed radial profiles of the particle pressure and anisotropy and was analytically represented by a vector potential, fitted by least squares to one derived by the Biot-Savart integral. The contribution of the asymmetric part, including the field of Birkeland currents, closed via the ionosphere, was represented as a divergenceless combination of expansions for the components of the B vector, and was also fitted by least squares to the corresponding Biot-Savart field. The total field-aligned current, associated with the noon-midnight pressure asymmetry of the outer ring current, was found to be significantly smaller than the total Region 2 current, observed at low altitudes. It is therefore concluded that most of that current is generated in the near-Earth plasma sheet. The goal of this work is a realistic and computationally efficient description of the asymmetric ring current, to be included in an advanced model of the external geomagnetic field.

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