Magnetospheric and Ionospheric Physics Research Projects

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	Top Research Project:    Solar Cycle and the Aurora (Nature, May 28,1998). After the 11-year solar cycle was established in the 18th century, efforts began to find out if the terrestrial environment was affected. The first relationship which seemed clear is that more aurora occur following solar maximum that minimum. We re-examined this question to test a controversial theory of auroral arc formation, with surprising results.
	Project 1:    Discrete Aurorae are supressed in sunlight. (Nature, June 27, 1996). Weak electron acceleration events can be found at all local times. However intense electron acceleration events occur only in darkness, or more explicitly, where large scale field-aligned currents are required by magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling, but neither the diffuse aurora nor sunlight provides the ionospheric conductivity needed to close the currents.
	Project 2:    Creation of the theta-aurora. New results published in the November 24, 1995 issue of Science confirm that the open field region really can become bifurcated, and demonstrate that it occurs when the IMF turns southward, after an extended interval of northward IMF.
	Project 3:    Advances in Simulating Magnetosheath Plasma Entry. Onsager et al. [1993] showed that it is possible to use existing analytical models to simulate the entry of magnetosheath ions into the cusp and mantle regions with surprisingly good agreement with observations, although e- entry was not well reproduced. New advances enforcing charge quasi-neutrality and including superthermal solar wind electrons now make it possible to realistically simulate all open field line populations.