Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufmsa11a1558v&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #SA11A-1558
Physics
[2411] Ionosphere / Electric Fields, [2427] Ionosphere / Ionosphere/Atmosphere Interactions, [2431] Ionosphere / Ionosphere/Magnetosphere Interactions, [2437] Ionosphere / Ionospheric Dynamics
Scientific paper
The conventional treatment of ionospheric electrodynamics (as expounded in standard textbooks and tutorial publications) consists of a set of equations, plus verbal descriptions of the physical processes supposedly represented by the equations. Key assumptions underlying the equations are: electric field equal to the gradient of a potential, electric current driven by an Ohm's law (with both electric-field and neutral-wind terms), continuity of current then giving a second-order elliptic differential equation for calculating the potential; as a separate assumption, ion and electron bulk flows are determined by ExB drifts plus collision effects. The verbal descriptions are in several respects inconsistent with the equations; furthermore, both the descriptions and the equations are not compatible with the more rigorous physical understanding derived from the complete plasma and Maxwell's equations. The conventional ionospheric equations are applicable under restricted conditions, corresponding to a quasi-steady-state equilibrium limit, and are thus intrinsically incapable of answering questions about causal relations or dynamic developments. Within their limited range of applicability, however, the equations are in most cases adequate to explain the observations, despite the deficient treatment of plasma physics. (A historical precedent that comes to mind is that of astronomical theory at the time of Copernicus and for some decades afterwards, when the Ptolemaic scheme could explain the observations at least as well if not better than the Copernican. Some of the verbal descriptions in conventional ionospheric electrodynamics might be considered Ptolemaic also in the more literal sense of being formulated exclusively in terms of a fixed Earth.) I review the principal differences between the two approaches, point out some questions where the conventional ionospheric theory does not provide unambiguous answers even within its range of validity (e.g., topside and bottomside boundary conditions on electrodynamics), and illustrate with some simple examples of how a neutral-wind dynamo really develops.
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