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Large and small scale structures in the plasma sheet: A signature of chaotic motion and resonance effects
Author(s) -
AshourAbdalla Maha,
Berchem Jean,
Büchner Jörg,
Zelenyi Lev M.
Publication year - 1991
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 - 10.1029/91gl01853
Subject(s) - plasma sheet , physics , chaotic scattering , scattering , computational physics , plasma , solar wind , boundary layer , scale (ratio) , boundary (topology) , chaotic , geophysics , classical mechanics , mechanics , magnetosphere , optics , mathematics , computer science , mathematical analysis , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence
Solar wind ion trajectories were computed using the Tsyganenko magnetic field model and assuming the presence of a uniform dawn‐dusk electric field. As a result of the energization and scattering produced by stochastic processes near the tail midplane, two distinct regions are formed, the plasma sheet boundary layer (PSBL) and the addition to these large scale structures the existence of new small scale structures, called beamlets, in the PSBL are predicted. Beamlets correspond to a structuring of the plasma distributions both in configuration and in velocity space. Beamlets consist of particles which experienced relatively small scattering when interacting with the tail neutral sheet and have Speiser or open trajectories at the point of observation.