Ionospheric current system accompanied by auroral vortex streets

TL;DR

This paper investigates the formation of auroral vortex streets during substorms by analyzing ionospheric currents and Alfvén wave instabilities through magnetohydrodynamic simulations, revealing detailed current system behaviors.

Contribution

It provides a detailed physics-based explanation of ionospheric current systems associated with auroral vortex streets, emphasizing Cowling polarization effects and current balancing mechanisms.

Findings

Vortex street development involves balanced upward/downward pair currents.

Perturbed Hall and Pedersen currents are polarized eastward and point equatorward.

Current systems penetrate between pair currents, supporting vortex formation.

Abstract

High resolution optical measurements have revealed that a sudden brightening of aurora and its deformation from an arc-like to a vortex street structure appear just at the onset of substorm. The instability of Alfv$\acute{\rm e}$n waves reflected from the ionosphere has been studied by means of magnetohydrodynamic simulations in order to comprehend the formation of auroral vortex streets. Our previous work reported that an initially placed arc intensifies, splits, and deforms into a vortex street during a couple of minutes, and the prime key is an enhancement of the convection electric field. This study elaborated physics of the ionospheric horizontal currents related to the vortex street in the context of so-called Cowling polarization. One component is due to the perturbed electric field by Alfv$\acute{\rm e}$n waves, and the other is due to the perturbed electron density (or polarization) in the ionosphere. It was found that, when a vortex street develops, upward/downward pair currents in its leading/trailing sides balance with an westward polarized component of the Hall current; it generates an eastward perturbed component of the Pedersen current. It was also found that both the perturbed component of the Hall current and the polarized component of the Pedersen current point equatorward, penetrating between the pair currents.