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Detailed Reference Information |
Nosé, M., Taguchi, S., Hosokawa, K., Christon, S.P., McEntire, R.W., Moore, T.E. and Collier, M.R. (2005). Overwhelming O+ contribution to the plasma sheet energy density during the October 2003 superstorm: Geotail/EPIC and IMAGE/LENA observations. Journal of Geophysical Research 110: doi: 10.1029/2004JA010930. issn: 0148-0227. |
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We studied dynamics of O+ ions during the superstorm that occurred on 29--31 October 2003, using energetic (9--210 keV/e) ion flux data obtained by the energetic particle and ion composition (EPIC) instrument on board the Geotail satellite and neutral atom data in the energy range of 10 eV to a few keV acquired by the low-energy neutral atom (LENA) imager on board the Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) satellite. Since the low-energy neutral atoms are created from the outflowing ionospheric ions by the charge exchange process, we could examine variations of ionospheric ion outflow with the IMAGE/LENA data. In the near-Earth plasma sheet of XGSM ~ -6 RE to -8.5 RE, we found that the H+ energy density showed no distinctive differences between the superstorm and quiet intervals (1--10 keV cm-3), while the O+ energy density increased from 0.05--3 keV cm-3 during the quiet intervals to ~100 keV cm-3 during the superstorm. The O+/H+ energy density ratio reached 10--20 near the storm maximum, which is the largest ratio in the near-Earth plasma sheet ever observed by Geotail, indicating more than 90% of O+ in the total energy density. We argued that such extreme increase of the O+/H+ energy density ratio during the October 2003 superstorm was due to mass-dependent acceleration of ions by storm-time substorms as well as an additional supply of O+ ions from the ionosphere to the plasma sheet. We compared the ion composition between the ring current and the near-Earth plasma sheet reported by previous studies and found that they are rather similar. On the basis of the similarity, we estimated that the ring current had the O+/H+ energy density ratio as large as 10--20 for the October 2003 superstorm. |
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Abstract |
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Keywords
Magnetospheric Physics, Plasma sheet, Magnetospheric Physics, Magnetic storms and substorms, Magnetospheric Physics, Magnetotail, Magnetospheric Physics, Ring current, ion composition, superstorm |
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Publisher
American Geophysical Union 2000 Florida Avenue N.W. Washington, D.C. 20009-1277 USA 1-202-462-6900 1-202-328-0566 service@agu.org |
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