HR: 15:10h
AN: SM22C-07    [PDF]
TI: Polar Study of Ion Outflow Versus its Energy Input
AU: * Zheng, Y
EM: yihua.zheng@gsfc.nasa.gov
AF: National Research Council, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Mailcode 696,Bldg 21, rm 232, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AU: Moore, T E
EM: thomas.e.moore@nasa.gov
AF: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Mailcode 692, Bldg.21, Rm 257A, Greenbelt, MD 20771
AU: Mozer, F
EM: fmozer@ssl.berkeley.edu
AF: Space Science Laboratory, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720 United States
AU: Russell, C T
EM: ctrussell@igpp.ucla.edu
AF: Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1567 United States
AU: Strangeway, R J
EM: strange@igpp.ucla.edu
AF: Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1567 United States
AB: A statistical study of the ion outflow versus its energy input is performed by using multi-instrument data (TIDE, EFI, MFI, HYDRA) of Polar during its perigee auroral passes in the year 2000. Several important physical quantities connected to the ion outflow have been investigated, among which are the Poynting flux from the perturbation fields (below 1./6 Hz), the electron density, temperature and the electron energy density. The perturbation fields here to calculate the Poynting flux may be associated with the small-scale quasi-static electric field structures of the field-aligned currents or/and time-varying Alfven wave structures, which are both proven to be important energy sources to power the aurora. Our preliminary results show that the field-aligned ion outflow flux correlates best with the Earth-directed Poynting flux and the precipitating electron density, and also with a much weaker correlation with the electron energy density and temperature. The findings from this Polar study are similar to those from FAST. The general corroboration between the independent data sets of the two spacecraft suggests that the empirical ion outflow scaling laws can be established, which will be beneficial to global simulation efforts.
DE: 2483 Wave/particle interactions
DE: 2708 Current systems (2409)
DE: 2716 Energetic particles, precipitating
DE: 2736 Magnetosphere/ionosphere interactions
SC: SPA - Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting