Nakamura, R;
Nagai, T;
Birn, J;
Sergeev, VA;
Le Contel, O;
Varsani, A;
Baumjohann, W;
... Turner, DL; + view all
(2017)
Near-Earth plasma sheet boundary dynamics during substorm dipolarization.
Earth, Planets and Space
, 69
, Article 129. 10.1186/s40623-017-0707-2.
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Abstract
We report on the large-scale evolution of dipolarization in the near-Earth plasma sheet during an intense (AL ~ −1000 nT) substorm on August 10, 2016, when multiple spacecraft at radial distances between 4 and 15 R E were present in the night-side magnetosphere. This global dipolarization consisted of multiple short-timescale (a couple of minutes) B z disturbances detected by spacecraft distributed over 9 MLT, consistent with the large-scale substorm current wedge observed by ground-based magnetometers. The four spacecraft of the Magnetospheric Multiscale were located in the southern hemisphere plasma sheet and observed fast flow disturbances associated with this dipolarization. The high-time-resolution measurements from MMS enable us to detect the rapid motion of the field structures and flow disturbances separately. A distinct pattern of the flow and field disturbance near the plasma boundaries was found. We suggest that a vortex motion created around the localized flows resulted in another field-aligned current system at the off-equatorial side of the BBF-associated R1/R2 systems, as was predicted by the MHD simulation of a localized reconnection jet. The observations by GOES and Geotail, which were located in the opposite hemisphere and local time, support this view. We demonstrate that the processes of both Earthward flow braking and of accumulated magnetic flux evolving tailward also control the dynamics in the boundary region of the near-Earth plasma sheet.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Near-Earth plasma sheet boundary dynamics during substorm dipolarization |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1186/s40623-017-0707-2 |
| Publisher version: | http://doi.org/10.1186/s40623-017-0707-2 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s) 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
| Keywords: | Substorm, Dipolarization, Plasma sheet boundary layer, Field-aligned current |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1575764 |
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