HR: 11:50h
AN: SM22A-06 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Critical Issues of the Near-Earth Neutral-Line Model
AU: * Ohtani, S
EM: ohtani@jhuapl.edu
AF: The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, 11100 Johns Hopkins Rd., Columbia, MD 20723, United States
AB: The substorm trigger is often addressed in terms of the formation of a near-Earth neutral-line (NENL). The currently popular idea, the outside-in model, proposes that the substorm is triggered as the fast plasma flow caused by near-Earth reconnection changes the current and plasma distributions in the near-Earth magnetotail. In this presentation I shall discuss some fundamental features of the substorm onset that this model does not explain explicitly. The list of such features includes the auroral expansion, pseudobreakup, and northward turning. Critical tests of the outside-in model in terms of those features should be essential for advancing our understanding of the substorm trigger mechanism.
DE: 2704 Auroral phenomena (2407)
DE: 2721 Field-aligned currents and current systems (2409)
DE: 2723 Magnetic reconnection (7526, 7835)
DE: 2744 Magnetotail
DE: 2790 Substorms
SC: SPA-Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: 2007 Joint Assembly