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Schematic of the Birkeland or Field-Aligned Currents and the ionospheric current systems they connect to, Pedersen and Hall currents. [1]A Birkeland current (also known as field-aligned current, FAC) is a set of electrical currents that flow along geomagnetic field lines connecting the Earth's magnetosphere to the Earth's high latitude ionosphere.
A rendering of the magnetic field lines of the magnetosphere of the Earth.. In astronomy and planetary science, a magnetosphere is a region of space surrounding an astronomical object in which charged particles are affected by that object's magnetic field.
(This simple definition assumes a noon-midnight plane of symmetry, but closed fields lacking such symmetry also must have cusps, by the fixed point theorem.) The amount of solar wind energy and plasma entering the actual magnetosphere depends on how far it departs from such a "closed" configuration, i.e. the extent to which Interplanetary ...
The plasmasphere, or inner magnetosphere, is a region of the Earth's magnetosphere consisting of low-energy (cool) plasma.It is located above the ionosphere.The outer boundary of the plasmasphere is known as the plasmapause, which is defined by an order of magnitude drop in plasma density.
Earth's ring current is responsible for shielding the lower latitudes of the Earth from magnetospheric electric fields. It therefore has a large effect on the electrodynamics of geomagnetic storms . The ring current system consists of a band, at a distance of 3 to 8 R E , [ 1 ] which lies in the equatorial plane and circulates clockwise around ...
fulfills that condition. Here = is the separatrix [13] separating the low latitude magnetosphere with closed geomagnetic field lines at θ ≥ θ m from the polar magnetosphere with open magnetic fieldlines (having only one footpoint on Earth), and τ the local time. θ m ~ 20° is the polar border of the auroral zone. q, Φ co, and τ co are empirical parameters, to be determined from the ...
The R wave and the L wave are right-hand and left-hand circularly polarized, respectively. The R wave has a cut-off at ω R (hence the designation of this frequency) and a resonance at ω c. The L wave has a cut-off at ω L and no resonance. R waves at frequencies below ω c /2 are also known as whistler modes. [6]
Venus and Mars do not have radiation belts, as their magnetospheric configurations do not trap energetic charged particles in orbit around the planet. Geomagnetic storms can cause electron density to increase or decrease relatively quickly (i.e., approximately one day or less). Longer-timescale processes determine the overall configuration of ...