HR: 0830h
AN: SM41B-0570    [PDF]
TI: High-Resolution, Low-Frequency Electric Field Measurements on an Auroral Sounding Rocket Experiment
AU: * Klatt, E M
EM: ek59@cornell.edu
AF: Dept. Of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
AU: Kintner, P M
EM: paul@ece.cornell.edu
AF: Dept. Of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
AU: MacDonald, E A
EM: elizabeth.macdonald@unh.edu
AF: Institute for the Study of Earth Oceans and Space, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824
AU: Lynch, K A
EM: lynch@birkeland.Dartmouth.edu
AF: Dept of Physics and Astronomy, Wilder Hall, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755
AB: The NASA SIERRA rocket mission was a multiple-payload experiment which flew into a 100 nT auroral substorm at altitudes up to 735 km over the Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska on January 14, 2002. The SIERRA experiment was composed of electric field instruments, magnetometers, and particle detectors. Here we examine high resolution and high sensitivity electric field results from one of the three payloads. The particle instrumentation indicates an equatorward region of inverted-V electron precipitation followed by a poleward region of mostly field-aligned suprathermal electron bursts. In the inverted-V region, the electric field record reflects the precipitation in that it varies inversely with the intensity of the electron precipitation. In the poleward precipitation region, the average electric field is much larger, 50 mV/m compared to 20 mV/m, with time varying components that exceeded 100 mV/m and periods of 0.5-5 s. We interpret the electric field fluctuations, also observed in the magnetometer data, as Alfvenic, and we compare the Poynting vector of the fields with the electron precipitation fine structure.
UR: http://sierra.ece.cornell.edu/
DE: 2407 Auroral ionosphere (2704)
DE: 2483 Wave/particle interactions
DE: 2704 Auroral phenomena (2407)
SC: SPA - Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting