Role of Time-Varying Convection Electric Field on the Fine Structure in Cold Plasma Density Outside the Plasmapause

Details Role of Time-Varying Convection Electric Field on the Fine Structure in Cold Plasma Density Outside the Plasmapause Role of Time-Varying Convection Electric Field on the Fine Structure in Cold Plasma Density Outside the Plasmapause

Dec 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011agufmsm52a..02s&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011, abstract #SM52A-02

Physics

[2712] Magnetospheric Physics / Electric Fields, [2736] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetosphere/Ionosphere Interactions, [2760] Magnetospheric Physics / Plasma Convection, [2768] Magnetospheric Physics / Plasmasphere

Scientific paper

Among the long-established, but not quite understood, features of plasmaspheric morphology is the frequent presence of very fine cold particle density structures observed on radial cuts in the vicinity of the plasmapause by the OGO-5 spacecraft. This observed fine structure in the cold plasma density just outside the plasmapause has been tentatively linked to time-varying convection electric field effects. However, to date, no modeling efforts have reproduced the fine structure in the observed in situ density profiles. We present the results of a modeling study performed to investigate if realistic time-varying electric and magnetic fields can account for the observed density structuring. We use the Rice Convection Model (RCM) together with a time-dependent magnetic field to compute convection electric fields for a period of a few days prior to the selected OGO-5 events. The model-computed convection electric field varies with observed geophysical parameters over the period of simulation, and includes such realistic features such as shielding of the inner magnetosphere by region-2 Birkeland currents, subauroral polarization streams, etc. After computing the time history of the electric field we use a test particle approach to trace particles in time-dependent electric and magnetic fields to reconstruct predicted cold plasma density along the OGO-5 orbit, and compare the predicted densities with the observed values. We discuss whether the computed time-varying electric field is sufficient to account for measured density structuring, or whether additional processes are required to explain observations.

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