Comparison of solitary waves and wave packets observed at plasma sheet boundary to results from the auroral zone

Abstract

The plasma sheet boundary, at distances intermediate between the auroral acceleration region and the regions where energy conversion associated with substorms occurs, is very dynamic with electron and ion beams, field-aligned currents and many types of waves and non-linear structures. We discuss electric and magnetic fields observations of waves occurring at two very different time-scales. At the longer scales (10's of seconds), Wygant (2000) have shown that the observed fields are associated with Alfvenic fluctuations which have their largest electric field normal to the average plane of the plasma sheet (δE_N). The simultaneously observed magnetic field perturbations are azimuthal(δB_T), resulting in a Poynting flux along the geomagnetic field. The observations are consistent with an incompressible, transverse electromagnetic surface shear Alfven mode at the surface of the plasma sheet boundary. The local δE_N/δB_T is consistent with V_A. The waves provide an intense earthward Poynting flux sufficient to provide the energy necessary for the energization of auroral electron beams. In addition, the large amplitude surface waves are magnetically conjugate (to within 1 degree) to intense auroral emission as determined from the UVI imager, whereas weak aurora are correlated with small amplitude electric fields. Particle detectors simultaneously observe ions flowing up the field line away from the earth, providing further evidence that low altitude acceleration is occurring on conjugate magnetic field lines. At small scales, large amplitude solitary waves are frequently observed, and ion acoustic, lower hybrid, and Langmuir wave packets are sometimes seen. There are clear differences between the solitary wave observations at the plasma sheet boundary and in the low altitude auroral zone. At high altitudes, only electron mode solitary waves have been identified and they occur both in regions of upward and downward field-aligned current, in contrast to the auroral zone where ion solitary waves occur in upward currents and electron solitary waves occur primarily in downward currents. This difference may because the growth of ion acoustic solitons requires that the plasma be strongly magnetized (f_ce/f_pe >>1) which is not the case for the observed high altitude plasma sheet boundary crossings. The high altitude events are associated with a wide variety of electron distribution types, whereas the low altitude events occur in regions of flat-top electron beam distributions. Preliminary evidence suggests that the high altitude events may be BGK electron holes, as has been shown for the low altitude events. For the parameter regime usually observed at high attitudes, electron holes would be stable. In addition, initial work on electron acoustic solitons suggests that these compressive waves would occur only for a limited range of parameters, so they are unlikely to explain the high altitude solitary waves.