Affiliation:
1. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
2. The Catholic University of America
3. University of Iowa
Abstract
We investigate a new regime of inertial Alfvén wave turbulence observed in the very low beta plasma of the auroral ionosphere using electric and magnetic field measurements by the TRICE-2 sounding rocket. Combining the observed features of the electric and magnetic field frequency spectra with the linear properties of inertial Alfvén waves, we deduce the path of the anisotropic turbulent cascade through wave vector space. We find a critically balanced cascade through the magnetohydrodynamic scales of the inertial range down to the perpendicular scale of the plasma skin depth, followed by a parallel cascade to the ion inertial length. We infer damping of the cascade by a combination of proton cyclotron damping and electron Landau damping.
Published by the American Physical Society
2024
Funder
Norges Forskningsråd
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
TRICE-2 rocket team
Publisher
American Physical Society (APS)