Multiple transpolar auroral arcs reveal insight about coupling processes in the Earth’s magnetotail

Zhang, Q.-H., Zhang, Y.-L., Wang, C., Lockwood, M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7397-2172, Yang, H.-G., Tang, B.-B., Xing, Z.-Y., Oksavik, K., Lyons, L. R., Ma, Y.-Z., Zong, Q.-G., Moen, J. I. and Xia, L.-D. (2020) Multiple transpolar auroral arcs reveal insight about coupling processes in the Earth’s magnetotail. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117 (28). pp. 16193-16198. ISSN 0027-8424 doi: 10.1073/pnas.2000614117

Abstract/Summary

A distinct class of aurora, called transpolar auroral arc (TPA) (in some cases called “theta” aurora), appears in the extremely high latitude ionosphere of the Earth when interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) is northward. The formation and evolution of TPA offers clues about processes transferring energy and momentum from the solar wind to the magnetosphere and ionosphere during a northward IMF. However, their formation mechanisms remain poorly understood and controversial. We report a mechanism identified from multiple-instrument observations of unusually bright, multiple TPAs and simulations from a high-resolution three-dimensional (3D) global MagnetoHydroDynamics (MHD) model. The observations and simulations show an excellent agreement and reveal that these multiple TPAs are generated by precipitating energetic magnetospheric electrons within field-aligned current (FAC) sheets. These FAC sheets are generated by multipleflow shear sheets in both the magnetospheric boundary produced by Kelvin–Helmholtz instability between supersonic solar wind flow and magnetosphere plasma, and the plasma sheet generated by the interactions between the enhanced earthward plasma flows from the distant tail (less than −100 RE) and the enhanced tailward flows from the near tail (about −20 RE). The study offers insight into the complex solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling processes under a northward IMF condition, and it challenges existing paradigms of the dynamics of the Earth’s magnetosphere.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/91538
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	National Academy of Sciences
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