Laboratory experiment on field-aligned current system

An electric current system consisting of field-aligned currents and ionospheric current in the polar region is studied experimentally in a laboratory as a first step of clarifying the acceleration mechanism of auroral particles. The present experiment has been performed by using a simplified model w...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Tsutsui,Minoru, Hasegawa,Kohei
Format: Report
Language:English
Published: Radio Atmospheric Science Center, Kyoto University/Radio Atmospheric Science Center, Kyoto University 1986
Subjects:
Online Access:https://nipr.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_uri&item_id=1998
http://id.nii.ac.jp/1291/00001998/
https://nipr.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_action_common_download&item_id=1998&item_no=1&attribute_id=18&file_no=1
Description
Summary:An electric current system consisting of field-aligned currents and ionospheric current in the polar region is studied experimentally in a laboratory as a first step of clarifying the acceleration mechanism of auroral particles. The present experiment has been performed by using a simplified model which consists of a power source for the solar wind-magnetosphere dynamo and a loading part for the polar ionosphere and field-aligned currents connecting the two. The experiment has been performed in order to get essential properties of the fieldaligned current in a magnetic mirror configuration which simulates the polar magnetosphere. Trails of the current along the magnetic lines of force have been proved by a newly developed equipment which can measure cross-sectional distributions of electron beam currents. It has been also found that higher energy electrons are not so easy to precipitate into the mirror magnetic converging region than the lower energy ones.