Rapidly moving sources of upper band ELF/VLF chorus near the magnetic equator.

M. Platino (1) , U.S. Inan (1) , T.F. Bell (1) , J.S. Pickett (2) , P. Canu (3)

1 STAR Lab - Space, Telecommunications, and Radioscience Laboratory
2 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa
3 CETP - Centre d'étude des environnements terrestre et planétaires

Multiple simultaneous wideband (Gurnett et al., 2001) measurements on the Cluster spacecraft of upper band chorus emissions near the magnetic equator (at magnetic latitudes between −20° and 10° and L shells ranging between L = 4 and L = 5) are used to deduce the properties of the compact source regions of ELF/VLF chorus emissions. The frequency differences exhibited by the same chorus emissions observed on different spacecraft are interpreted (Inan et al., 2004) in terms of a differential Doppler shift, using a simple model involving rapidly moving sources traveling at speeds comparable to the parallel resonant velocity of counter-streaming gyroresonant electrons. Cluster observations are used to determine the location and extent along the Earth's magnetic field lines of the source of chorus. Frequency and time differences between spacecraft are interpreted as a direct consequence of the rapid motion of highly localized source regions of chorus. In this paper, we examine the previously presented model of rapid motion of sources of chorus, extending the calculations to a three-dimensional space, using measurements of the four Cluster spacecraft. These calculations of source location and velocity as a function of frequency indicate that chorus sources move a distance of ∼6000 km along the field lines. The emitted chorus waves at the source are assumed to have a wide range of wave normal angles, but the rays reaching the spacecraft seem to be the ones with lower angles (with some exceptions). The ranges of velocity obtained vary with frequency around values ranging from ∼0.01c to ∼0.04c.

Mots clés: chorus waves; sources of chorus; whistler mode propagation

Domaines: Astrophysique [astro-ph]; Cosmologie et astrophysique extra-galactique [astro-ph.CO]

M. Platino, U.S. Inan, T.F. Bell, J.S. Pickett, P. Canu. Rapidly moving sources of upper band ELF/VLF chorus near the magnetic equator.. Journal of Geophysical Research Space Physics, 2006, 111 (A9), pp.A09218. ⟨10.1029/2005JA011468⟩. ⟨hal-00153842⟩