The motion and deceleration processes of plasma sheet high-speed flows have great significance to magnetospheric particle acceleration,magnetic field perturbation,magnetic flux transport,triggering of substorm,and the current system formation in the magnetotail.From February to April 2009,two satellites of the Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms mission,THA and THE,were often separated largely in Z direction,but had small X and Y separations.Such special configuration allows simultaneous observations of highspeed flows at the center and boundary of the plasma sheet.Based on selected case study and statistical analysis,it is found that for about 89%of the events we selected,the probe further away from the neutral sheet observed the high-speed flow earlier than the one close to the center,and the flow is mainly field aligned.And for about 95%events the probe further away from the neutral sheet observed higher X component of the plasma flow.With the hypothesis that parallel flow keeps the same speed during its earthward propagation while central plasma sheet stream uniformly or suddenly brakes on its way to the earth,we deduced the position where the deceleration begins to be between 13 Re and 17 Re downtail,where thenear-earth reconnection is supposed to occur.In addition,our statistical results show that dipolarization fronts observed in the central plasma sheet are more prominent than those observed in the plasma sheet boundary layer ahead of the high-speed flow.
A flapping wave was observed by THEMIS-B(P1)and THEMIS-C(P2)probes on the dawn side of the magnetotail,while the solar wind was generally stable.The magnetic activity was quite weak,suggesting that this flapping wave was generated by an internal instability,which normally occurs during magnetic quiet times.Our analysis shows that the flapping wave was propagating downward with a tail-aligned scale of at least 3.7 R E and did not show much change in shape during its propagation from P1 to P2.Correlation analysis employed to estimate the time lag between the corresponding half waveforms of P1 and P2 shows that the propagating velocities along the current sheet normal directions were close to each other in the beginning,but increased linearly later on.The average wavelength of the flapping wave is approximately 4 R E.Theoretical analysis suggests that the ballooning type wave model may not be the mechanism for the observed flapping wave,but that the magnetic double-gradient instability model is a more plausible candidate.
Weijie SunSuiyan FuQuanqi ShiQiugang ZongZhonghua YaoTing XiaoGeorge Parks
It is believed that a southward interplanetary magnetic field(IMF) is mainly responsible for the energy input ...
WEI Yong~(1,2),ZONG QiuGang~2,PU ZuYin~2,WAN WeiXing~(1*),LIU JianJun~3,FU SuiYan~2 & SHI QuanQi~4 1 Beijing National Observatory of Space Environment,Institute of Geology and Geophysics,Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100029,China
It is believed that a southward interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) is mainly responsible for the energy input from solar wind into the magnetosphere.This paper presents an unusual case of strong anti-sunward plasma flow (up to 2 km/s) in the polar cap ionosphere and large cross-polar cap potential (CPCP) during a period of horizontal IMF (|BZ| < 2 nT) observed by both ACE (at the L1 point) and Geotail (on the dusk flank of the magnetosheath).The CPCP is even higher than that under preceding BZ ≈-23 nT.Furthermore,GOES8 observed that the magnetosheath field turns northward as the anti-sunward plasma flow and CPCP start to increase,which implies that the magnetosheath field interacting with the Earth's magnetopause has significantly rotated and differs from the IMF observed by ACE and Geotail.In accordance with previous theoretical work,we suggest that the magnetic field line draping produces a southward magnetosheath field and enhances anti-sunward plasma flow and the CPCP.
