New Features of Time Domain Electric-Field Structures in the Auroral Acceleration Region

Abstract

The Polar Satellite carries the first three-axis electric field detector flown in the magnetosphere. Its direct measurement of electric field components perpendicular and parallel to the local magnetic field has revealed new classes and features of electric field structures associated with the plasma acceleration that produces discrete auroras and that populates the magnetosphere with plasma of ionospheric origin. These structures, associated with the hydrogen ion cyclotron mode, include very large solitary waves, spiky field structures, wave envelopes of parallel electric fields, and very large amplitude, nonlinear, coherent ion cyclotron waves.