Seminar

Substorms are elemental physical processes of solar wind energy storage and explosive release in Earth's magnetotail region, which is accompanied by Alfvénic waves transmitted to the earth’s ionosphere and configurated by the ionospheric properties. Substorms can be divided into three phases: the growth phase, the expansion phase, and the recovery phase. Here we use GAMERA(Grid Agnostic MHD for Extended Research Applications) to investigate the spatial distribution of Alfvénic Poynting flux in ionosphere and magnetotail through an idealized substorm-SMC cycle. We find that the average Alfvénic Poynting flux is about symmetric of midnight not only in the ionosphere but magnetotail during the expansion phase. During the recovery phase, the spatial distribution of average downward Alfvénic Poynting flux exhibits a significant dawn-dusk asymmetry, most of that located on the pre-midnight sector both in the ionosphere and the magnetotail.

Additional information: Mr. YIN Qianfeng, qianfengyin@connect.hku.hk