Observation of a current‐driven plasma instability at the outer zone‐plasma sheet boundary

Several spacecraft experimenters have reported on the detection of large temporal variations in trapped electron fluxes near L ≃ 5–6 at midlatitudes in the night hemisphere. In this report we describe in detail the particle, wave, and field changes measured when Ogo 5 traversed an outer-zone trapping boundary of this type on September 7, 1968. It is shown that thermal proton concentrations and E > 50-kev electron fluxes abruptly decreased when electrons with (1–4) kev mean energy were detected. It is also shown that currents flowed along the average geomagnetic field direction near the plasma boundaries and that these were accompanied by intense VLF electrostatic waves. It is proposed that turbulent resistivity produced by current-driven plasma instabilities allows parallel dc electric fields to develop along this boundary. Some measured changes in local proton temperature are discussed in terms of resistive heating, but it is noted that spacecraft charging phenomena might partially account for observed thermal shifts.

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