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Ionospheric Footprints of Detached Magnetotail Interchange Heads
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  • Evgeny Panov,
  • Wolfgang Baumjohann,
  • Rumi Nakamura,
  • Philip L Pritchett,
  • James M Weygand,
  • Marina V Kubyshkina
Evgeny Panov
Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Wolfgang Baumjohann
Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences
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Rumi Nakamura
Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences
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Philip L Pritchett
Department of Physics and Astronomy , University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
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James M Weygand
Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, University of California , Los Angeles, CA, USA
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Marina V Kubyshkina
Institute of Physics, St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia
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Abstract

As it was recently predicted, the kinetic ballooning/interchange instability (BICI) can provoke reconnection onsets that lead to detached azimuthally thin earthward intrusions (heads) of depleted plasma tubes when 𝛽eq ⩽ 100. Such detached BICI heads would be seen as localized earthward-propagating dipolarization fronts. Using Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms observations in the plasma sheet at XGSM ≈ −11 Re and conjugate All-Sky Imager and magnetometer networks observations on the ground, we show four examples when prominent dipolarization fronts with moderate earthward flows were observed amidst azimuthally drifting interchange heads and concurrently with the ionospheric current intensifications near Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms footprints and auroral bright spots originating from dimmer azimuthal beads/rays. These events support the idea that some of the BICI heads detach from the region with reversed radial gradient of Bz. The detached BICI heads propagate earthward-driving ionospheric pseudo-breakups.
16 Jul 2019Published in Geophysical Research Letters volume 46 issue 13 on pages 7237-7247. 10.1029/2019GL083070