Radial Variation of the Average Ion Mass Inferred From the Frequency of Standing Alfven Waves Observed by CRRES

Details Radial Variation of the Average Ion Mass Inferred From the Frequency of Standing Alfven Waves Observed by CRRES Radial Variation of the Average Ion Mass Inferred From the Frequency of Standing Alfven Waves Observed by CRRES

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufmsm11b0318t&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #SM11B-0318

Physics

2431 Ionosphere/Magnetosphere Interactions (2736), 2730 Magnetosphere: Inner, 2752 Mhd Waves And Instabilities (2149, 6050, 7836), 2768 Plasmasphere, 2778 Ring Current

Scientific paper

Heavy ions originating from the ionosphere are considered to affect the dynamics of the ring current and the plasmasheet. However, the morphology of the heavy ions in the magnetosphere is not fully understood in part due to the difficulty in observing the ions with particle detectors. Instead of using direct measurements, we can use the frequency of standing Alfven waves to gain information on the spatial and temporal variation of ionospheric heavy ions. In this study we determine the standing wave frequency from the electric and magnetic field data acquired by CRRES, estimate the mass density from the wave frequency, and use the electron number density derived from plasma wave spectra observed by the same spacecraft to obtain the average ion mass (M), which is an indicator of the heavy ion content of the plasma. Standing Alfven waves were detected on most dayside CRRES orbits and we can estimate M over an L range of 2 to 8, often on a single orbit. We report on the radial profile of M estimated by the ULF wave technique for a sequence of CRRES orbits during August 1991. For a sample orbit we found that the value of M changes from ~2 amu inside the plasmapause (L ~ 4) to ~4 amu outside, which implies the presence of an oxygen torus outside the plasmasphere. This analysis will be extended to find the variation of the L profile of M through the course of a geomagnetic storm.

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