Ionospheric Thermal Plasma Acceleration Linked to Magnetopause Motions: First Cluster Results

Details Ionospheric Thermal Plasma Acceleration Linked to Magnetopause Motions: First Cluster Results Ionospheric Thermal Plasma Acceleration Linked to Magnetopause Motions: First Cluster Results

Dec 2001

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001agufmsm22a0793s&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2001, abstract #SM22A-0793

Physics

2463 Plasma Convection, 2724 Magnetopause, Cusp, And Boundary Layers, 2760 Plasma Convection

Scientific paper

This paper presents the first observations with Cluster of a very dense population of thermal ionospheric ions (H+, He+, O+) locally accelerated perpendicularly to the local magnetic field in a region adjacent to the magnetopause and on its magnetospheric side. The observation periods follow a long period of very weak magnetic activity. Recurrent motions of the magnetopause are, in the presented cases, unexpectedly associated with the appearance, inside closed field lines, of recurrent energy structures of ionospheric ions with energies in the 5 eV to ~1000 eV range. The heaviest ions being detected with the highest energies. Here the ion behavior is interpreted as resulting from local electric field enhancements-decreases which adiabatically enhance-lower the bulk energy of a local dense thermal ion population. This drift effect, directly linked to magnetopause motions caused by pressure changes, allows the thermal ions to overcome the satellite potential and be detected by the suprathermal CIS Cluster experiment. When fast flowing, i.e. when detectable, the density (1 cm-3) of these ions from terrestrial origin is, in the cases presented here, largely higher than the local density of ions from magnetospheric-plasma sheet origin which poses again the question of the relative importance of solar and ionospheric sources for the magnetospheric plasma even during very quiet magnetic conditions.

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