Ballooning-Interchange Instability in the Near-Earth Plasma Sheet and Auroral Beads: Global Magnetospheric Modeling at the Limit of the MHD Approximation.

ABSTRACT: Explosive magnetotail activity has long been understood in the context of its auroral manifestations. While global models have been used to interpret and understand many magnetospheric processes, the temporal and spatial scales of some auroral forms have been inaccessible to global modeling creating a gulf between observational and theoretical studies of these phenomena. We present here an important step toward bridging this gulf using a newly developed global magnetosphere-ionosphere model with resolution capturing ≲ 30 km azimuthal scales in the auroral zone. In a global magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation of the growth phase of a synthetic substorm, we find the self-consistent formation and destabilization of localized magnetic field minima in the near-Earth magnetotail. We demonstrate

SUBMITTER: Sorathia KA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7507213 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature