Sub-kilometer thermal plasma structure near 1750 km altitude in the polar cusp/cleft

Journal Article · Mon Aug 15 00:00:00 EDT 1994 · Geophysical Research Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1029/94GL00887· OSTI ID:28560

Knudsen, D J; Whalen, B A; Yau, A W; Greffen, M J ^[1]; Eriksson, A I ^[2]; Lloyd, N ^[3]; Boehm, M; Clemmons, J ^[4]; Blomberg, L G ^[5]

---

1. National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario (Canada)
2. Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala (Sweden)
3. Univ. of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon (Canada)
4. Max Planck Institut fuer Extraterrestrische Physik, Garching (Germany)
5. Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm (Sweden)

The authors present measurements made by the cold plasma analyzer (CPA) on the Freja satellite during an encounter with the polar cusp at an altitude of 1750 km. The instrument allows energy spectra of ions and electrons to be collected from 0 to 16 eV, with a time resolution of 1.2 sec. In addition the count rates can be sampled at 600/s to provide a much finer scaled measure of particle flux and energy flow into the instrument. The high time/spatial resolution this sampling rate affords allowed the observation of burst ion and electron events with time scales of 10 ms, and tens of percent variations.

• OSTI ID: 28560
• Journal Information: Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 21, Issue 17; Other Information: PBD: 15 Aug 1994
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

66 PHYSICS
COLD PLASMA
VARIATIONS
SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION
POLAR CUSP
ELECTRONS
EV RANGE
REMOTE SENSING