Spontaneous Generation of Self-Organized Solitary Wave Structures at Earth's Magnetopause

Journal Article · Fri Nov 16 04:00:00 EST 2007 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVLETT.99.205006· OSTI ID:21024475

Trines, R; Bingham, R; Dunlop, M W; Davies, J A ^[1]; Vaivads, A ^[2]; Mendonca, J T; Silva, L O ^[3]; Shukla, P K ^[4]

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1. Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, Oxon, OX11 0QX (United Kingdom)
2. Swedish Institute for Space Physics, Box 537, SE-751 21 Uppsala (Sweden)
3. Instituto Superior Tecnico, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisbon (Portugal)
4. Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum, 44780 Bochum (Germany)

Spontaneous formation of solitary wave structures has been observed in Earth's magnetopause, and is shown to be caused by the breakup of a zonal flow by the action of drift wave turbulence. Here we show matched observations and modeling of coherent, large-scale solitary electrostatic structures, generated during the interaction of short-scale drift wave turbulence and zonal flows at the Earth's magnetopause. The observations were made by the Cluster spacecraft and the numerical modeling was performed using the wave-kinetic approach to drift wave-zonal flow interactions. Good agreement between observations and simulations has been found, thus explaining the emergence of the observed solitary structures as well as confirming earlier theoretical predictions of their existence.

• OSTI ID: 21024475
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters, Journal Name: Physical Review Letters Journal Issue: 20 Vol. 99; ISSN 0031-9007; ISSN PRLTAO
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

58 GEOSCIENCES
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
EARTH MAGNETOSPHERE
MAGNETOPAUSE
SIMULATION
TURBULENCE
WAVE PROPAGATION