Premium
Development of shoulders and plumes in the frame of the interchange instability mechanism for plasmapause formation
Author(s) -
Pierrard V.,
Lemaire J. F.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2003gl018919
Subject(s) - plasmasphere , instability , mechanism (biology) , physics , electric field , plasma , geophysics , magnetosphere , mechanics , quantum mechanics
The mechanism of plasmapause formation based on interchange instability and a Kp‐dependent magnetospheric electric field model, enables us to determine the position of the plasmapause as a function of Kp and local time. We illustrate here how this physical mechanism is able to account for the formation of shoulders like those observed by EUV on IMAGE. A wide variety of other structures observed by IMAGE like tails (also called plumes), and notches are also obtained with this mechanism for the formation of a “knee” in the high altitude cross‐L distribution of the cold plasma density distribution.