Collisionless conductivity and stochastic heating of the plasma sheet in the geomagnetic tail

Journal Article · Sun Sep 01 00:00:00 EDT 1991 · Journal of Geophysical Research; (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1029/91JA01014· OSTI ID:5254753

Horton, W; Tajima, T ^[1]

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1. Univ. of Texas, Austin (United States)

The chaotic single particle orbits in the geomagnetic tail are used to calculate the collisionless conductivity. It is shown that the stochasticity from inhomogeneous magnetic fields leads to a power law decay of the single particle correlation function similar to an elastic collisional process. The height-integrated dissipative part of the collisionless conductivity governs the irreversible stochastic heating of the plasma sheet. Both exponentially growing reconnection type magnetic perturbations and a sinusoidal pulse with a half period up to 1 hour in duration are used to analyze the plasma sheet heating.

• OSTI ID: 5254753
• Journal Information: Journal of Geophysical Research; (United States), Vol. 96:A9; ISSN 0148-0227
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
PLASMA SHEET
ELECTRIC CONDUCTIVITY
PLASMA HEATING
COLLISIONLESS PLASMA
CORRELATION FUNCTIONS
EARTH MAGNETOSPHERE
INTERACTIONS
MAGNETIC BAYS
MAGNETOTAIL
SOLAR WIND
STOCHASTIC PROCESSES
EARTH ATMOSPHERE
ELECTRICAL PROPERTIES
FUNCTIONS
HEATING
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
PLASMA
SOLAR ACTIVITY
640201* - Atmospheric Physics- Auroral
Ionospheric
& Magetospheric Phenomena