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And Ground-Based Observations of Pulsating Aurora University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Doctoral Dissertations Student Scholarship Spring 2010 Space- and ground-based observations of pulsating aurora Sarah Jones University of New Hampshire, Durham Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation Recommended Citation Jones, Sarah, "Space- and ground-based observations of pulsating aurora" (2010). Doctoral Dissertations. 597. https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/597 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SPACE- AND GROUND-BASED OBSERVATIONS OF PULSATING AURORA BY SARAH JONES B.A. in Physics, Dartmouth College 2004 DISSERTATION Submitted to the University of New Hampshire in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Physics May, 2010 UMI Number: 3470104 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMT Dissertation Publishing UMI 3470104 Copyright 2010 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 This dissertation has been examined and approved. wacos^L Dissertation Director, Marc Lessard, Research Associate Professor of Physics k. &uK Amitava Bhattacharjee, Professor of Physics tM^/z^fS^c /ZZ^€fr&6st? Eberhard Moebius, Professor of Physics /•Ulwa-o M JQ^ft,'Cf4/i*- Jaraes/Ryan1/ , Professo' r of Physics Karl ^rref7 Professor of Physics Date ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to give special thanks to my advisor, Dr. Marc Lessard, for providing me with excellent research opportunities from my undergraduate through graduate studies and for exposing me to practically all aspects of life as a research scientist leaving me especially well prepared for life after graduate school, assuming such a thing exists! Thanks also to Paul Riley and the UNH machinists for teaching me so much about in­ strument design; the NASA Sounding Rocket Operations Contract employees; the other sci­ entists; engineers and sounding rocket students from the ROPA, ACES, and CASCADES2 sounding rockets; and the ground support groups from University of Alaksa - Fairbanks and SRI International and down range at Toolik Field Station, Fort Yukon, and Kaktovik, AK who together make rocket science possible. Thanks to all of our collaborators including Drs. Kristina Lynch at Dartmouth Col­ lege, Paul Kintner at Cornell University, Hans Stenbaek-Nielsen and Dirk Lummerzheim of University of Alaska - Fairbanks, K. Asamura of Tohoku University, Craig Heinselman at SRI International, Joshua Semeter at Boston Univ, and to my Ph.D committee members including Drs. Amitava Bhattacharjee, Eberhard Moebius, James Ryan, and Karl Slifer for helpful comments which greatly improved this document. I would also like to thank Goddard Space Flight Center, in particular Dr. James Slavin and my NASA technical advisor Dr. John Sigwarth, for providing me a Graduate Student Researchers Program fellowship. The summer I spent at GSFC was filled with great research and networking opportunities. And finally thanks to the past and present students working in the UNH Magnetosphere- Ionosphere Research Laboratory and/or the other students who have been stationed in room iii 426ab. Thanks for putting up with me! Research at the University of New Hampshire, Cornell University, Dartmouth Col­ lege, and by Stenbaek-Nielsen and Lummerzheim at the University of AlaskaFairbanks was supported by NASA Grants NNG05WC36G, NNG05WC37G, NNG05WC38G, and NNG05WC39G, respectively. Work at Boston University was supported by NSF Grant ATM-0538868, and PFISR data collection and analysis were supported by NSF Grant ATM-0608577. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii LIST OF FIGURES viii ABSTRACT xv 1 INTRODUCTION 1 2 PLASMA PHYSICS 5 2.1 Plasma - The Fourth State of Matter 5 2.2 Single Particle Motion and Adiabatic Invariants 8 2.3 Pitch Angle and Loss Cone 11 2.4 Pitch-Angle Scattering by Cyclotron Resonance 11 3 THE SUN-EARTH SYSTEM 14 3.1 The Sun and Solar Wind 14 3.2 The Earth's Magnetosphere 16 3.3 Magnetic Reconnection 18 3.4 Plasma Entry and Convection 19 3.5 The Ionosphere and Neutral Atmosphere 20 4 AURORA 22 4.1 Auroral Sounding Rockets 22 4.2 General Information 24 4.3 Types of Aurora 25 4.4 Auroral Storms and Substorms 26 v 5 MEASUREMENTS AND METHODS 30 5.1 Rocket Observations of Pulsating Aurora (ROPA) 30 5.2 Advanced Modular Incoherent Scatter Radar (AMISR) 32 5.3 Inverse Methods 35 6 PULSATING AURORA 41 6.1 Characteristics of Pulsating Aurora 41 6.2 Particle Precipitation Associated with Pulsating Aurora 44 6.3 Proposed Pulsation Mechanisms 47 6.4 The Importance of the Ionosphere (Stenbaek-Nielsen 1980) 50 6.5 The Relationship Between Diffuse and Pulsating Aurora 54 6.6 Application of the Flowing Cyclotron Maser 58 7 PFISR AND ROCKET OBSERVATIONS OF PULSATING AURORA 62 7.1 Observations of Ionospheric Effects on Pulsating Aurora 62 7.2 Rocket Observations of Pulsating Aurora 64 7.3 PFISR Observations of Pulsating Aurora 65 7.4 Numerical estimate of incident electron energy spectrum 66 7.5 Numerical estimate of luminosity profile 74 7.6 Discussion and conclusions 75 8 STATISTICS OF THE SOURCE REGION FOR PULSATING AURORA 80 8.1 Source Region for Pulsating Aurora 80 8.2 Large-scale aspects of pulsating aurora 80 8.3 Methodology 83 8.4 Results 85 8.4.1 Spatial/temporal evolution 85 vi 8.4.2 Event durations 86 8.4.3 Spatial occurrence distributions and temporal properties 88 8.5 Discussion and conclusions 90 9 SUB-KEV ELECTRON SIGNATURES WITHIN PULSATING AURORA 92 9.1 ROPA event 92 9.2 ROPA and REIMEI Observations of Precipitating Electrons 93 9.3 Estimation of Accelerated Distribution 96 9.4 PFISR Observations of Sub-keV Electron Signatures 98 9.5 Discussion and Conclusions 99 10 CONCLUSIONS 101 10.1 Poker Flat Incoherent Scatter Radar and Rocket Observations of Pulsating Aurora 102 10.2 Statistics of the Source Region for Pulsating Aurora 104 10.3 Sub-keV Electron Signatures Within Pulsating Aurora 105 10.4 The Importance of Pulsating Aurora 106 BIBLIOGRAPHY 109 vii LIST OF FIGURES 1 The particle's Doppler shifted cyclotron frequency compares with the wave frequency such that in the frame of the electron the electric field is static. 12 1 Artist rendition of the Sun-Earth system, note that the magnetosphere is highly distorted from the dipole form (NASA) 15 2 Magnetosphere illustration showing various regions and currents associated with magnetic field boundaries, (with permission from Tony Lui) 17 3 Illustration of reconnection site, the two magnetic separatrices (dashed lines) separate four regions. Field lines and frozen-in plasma move inward from the top and bottom of the figure toward the reconnection site at the center and a current develops (into the plane of the figure) between the oppositely directed magnetic field lines. After reconnection occurs there is a new magnetic field configuration with plasma and field lines moving outward to the sides of the figure. The actual process of magnetic reconnection is not completely understood. (Wikipedia, public domain image) 18 4 CLUSTER statistical convection maps created using data from the Electron Drift Instrument for southward and northward IMF (with permission from S. Haaland, Max-Planck Inst, ESA) 20 vni 1 Launch of four-stage sounding rocket for Rocket Observations of Pulsating Aurora (ROPA) on February 12, 2007. (photo courtesy of Todd Valentic, SRI International) 23 2 Auroral substorm and pulsating aurora over northern Finland-2004 March 14. (courtesy of Robert Wagner, Max-Planck Inst) 27 1 Illustration of ISR spectra showing peaks at both the electron plasma fre­ quency and the ion acoustic frequency, without and with Landau damping effects. 33 2 Conceptual drawing of AMISR antenna array with aurora in background (with permission from Craig Heinselman, SRI International) 34 3 Comparison of the ionization rates obtained from three methods using same MSIS modeled atmosphere; note dependence of ionization rate on altitude, location of peak changes in altitude for various incident electron energies (Figure 3 of Fang et al. (2008), with permission from Journal of Geophysical Research) 37 4 The first image in the top row is the measured data, followed by the additive noise obtained by averaging several dark frames, then the result of subtracting the additive noise, and finally a lightly filtered version of the image. The second row contains possible de-blurred image solutions, first by a crude direct inversion, second by a simple minimum norm method, and finally using the maximum entropy method which for these cases provided the best results 39 IX 6-1 The results of computer analysis of simultaneous VLF emission and auroral pulsation data. The uppermost panel shows the dynamic spectrum of the low- frequency emissions. The second panel presents the variations of intensity maxima (dotted curve) and auroral intensity in two windows. This figure shows that for some look directions, in particular photometer 1, the optical intensity of the aurora correlated with the intensity of VLF wave emissions, (reprinted with permission from Tagirov et al. (1999)) 45 6-2 Frequency time spectra of VLF (upper panel) and ELF (bottom panel) wave activity obtained by FAST. Almost no ELF or VLF wave activity was seen inside the region of the pulsating aurora, though intense auroral hiss emissions were observed in the region of a discrete aurora during the interval of 232030 to 232220 UT.
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