Convective generation of `giant' undulations on the evening diffuse auroral boundary

Details Convective generation of `giant' undulations on the evening diffuse auroral boundary Convective generation of `giant' undulations on the evening diffuse auroral boundary

Oct 1994

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1994jgr....9919499y&link_type=abstract

Journal of Geophysical Research (ISSN 0148-0227), vol. 99, no. A10, p. 19,499-19,512

Physics

19

Auroras, Dense Plasmas, Earth Magnetosphere, Electrostatics, Evening, Geomagnetism, Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability, Computerized Simulation, Two Dimensional Models, Wave Propagation

Scientific paper

Convective generation of `giant' undulations on the equatorward boundary of an evening diffuse aurora is numerically simulated. A giant undulation is defined as a waveform having the crest-to-trough amplitude comparable to the wavelength. The two-dimensional electrostatic particle code is used for studying the motion of magnetospheric plasma perpendicular to the geomagnetic field. According to the simulation results by Yamamoto et al. (1993), the giant undulation is a manifestation of the Kelvin-Helmholtz (K-H) waves arising from the polarization of `an arc sheet' (dense plasma population of ionospheric origin) in the magnetosphere, which is assumed to be located just equatorward of the region of proton diffuse aurora. In this previous simulation, initially, irregularities are given evenly over the entire azimuthal length of the arc sheet so that the resulting undulations are periodic. The present simulation deals with a different situation, that a K-H wave starts growing from local irregularities on the polarized arc sheet. The simulation results show that the disturbance propagates both westward and eastward (relative to the background flow), forming a series of K-H waves along the arc sheet. As a consequence, giant undulations with spatially varying amplitudes are developed on the equatorward boundary of a diffuse aurora, which is located just poleward of the arc sheet.

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