Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agufmsm41a1702h&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2009, abstract #SM41A-1702
Physics
[2736] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetosphere/Ionosphere Interactions, [2764] Magnetospheric Physics / Plasma Sheet
Scientific paper
We investigate localized energy conversion regions (ECRs) in the Earth's plasma sheet. In total we have studied 151 ECRs during 660h of plasma sheet data from the summer and fall of 2001 when Cluster was close to apogee at an altitude of about 15-20RE. Cluster offers appropriate conditions for the investigation of energy conversion by the evaluation of the power density, E.J, where E is the electric field and J the current density. From the sign of the power density, we have identified more than three times as many Concentrated Load Regions (CLRs) as Concentrated Generator Regions (CGRs): 116 CLRs and 35 CGRs. We find that the CLRs appear to be located closer to the neutral sheet, while CGRs prefer locations towards the plasma sheet boundary layer (PSBL). To our knowledge, these are the first in situ observations confirming the general notion of the plasma sheet, on the average, behaving as a load. At the same time the plasma sheet appears to be highly structured, with energy conversion occurring in both directions between the fields and the particles. The CLRs appear to be stronger and somewhat larger than the CGRs. Based on some simplifying assumptions, we conclude that the scale size of the ECRs is roughly between 2RE and 5RE. We find that a majority of the observed ECRs are rather stationary in space, but varying in time. The lifetime of the ECRs are of the order of ΔT~2 min, consistent with large scale magnetotail MHD simulations. The life time of the CGRs is somewhat shorter than for the CLRs. We believe that ECRs rise and vanish in significant regions of the plasma sheet, possibly oscillating between load and generator character. It is probable that at least some of the observed CGRs channel energy to the ionosphere, but some energy might also just oscillate (between electromagnetic and kinetic) back and forth in the magnetotail.
Buchert Stephan C.
Dandouras Iannis S.
Hamrin Maria
Kistler Lynn M.
Klecker Berndt
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