A number of recent studies have shown that the upstream Mach number may play a significant role in the energy transfer between the solar wind and the magnetosphere. Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation results of the magnetosphere-ionosphere system are presented that show the transition from nominal solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field driving to extremely strong driving. One of the pre...

[1] In this paper we investigate how the parameters of the ionosphere and the low-altitude magnetosphere mediate the formation and spatiotemporal properties of small-scale, intense electromagnetic structures commonly observed by low-altitude satellites in the auroral and subauroral magnetosphere. The study is based on numerical modeling of a time-evolving, nonlinear system that describes multis...

Numerous linear studies of the geomagnetic indices have shown that the magnetospheric system is neither periodic nor quasiperiodic, and that only part of the AE variation can be explained as a direct linear response to the solar wind. This suggests the possibility that the magnetosphere is a non-linear system, and recent studies have been directed to determining whether the magnetospheric syste...

The global auroral dissipation power as observed by the imager on the Polar spacecraft is used as a proxy for the power dissipation of the Earth’s magnetosphere to examine whether or not the magnetosphere is an avalanching system. It is found that the probability density distributions for the area and power of auroral activity sites have a power law component within a finite scale range, sugges...

X-ray photons emitted from the surface or atmosphere of a magnetized neutron star is highly polarized. However, the observed polarization may be modified due to photon propagation through the star’s magnetosphere. For photon frequencies much larger than the typical radio frequency, vacuum birefringence due to strong-field quantum electrodynamics dominates over the plasma effect. We study the ev...

Further studies of the Saturnian magnetosphere and planetary magnetic field by Voyager 2 have substantiated the earlier results derived from Voyager 1 observations in 1980. The magnetic field is primarily that of a centered dipole (moment = 0.21 gauss-RS(3); where one Saturn radius, RS, is 60,330 kilometers) tilted approximately 0.8 degrees from the rotation axis. Near closest approach to Satur...

The Dst index is the most popular measure of a scale of magnetic storms, and it is widely used as a monitor of the conditions of the Earth’s magnetosphere. Since the Dst index contains contributions from multiple magnetospheric phenomena, it is important to distinguish each of the contributions in order to obtain meaningful information about the conditions of the magnetosphere. There have been ...

Many widely used methods for describing and understanding the magnetosphere are based on balance conditions for quasi-static equilibrium (this is particularly true of the classical theory of magnetosphere/ionosphere coupling, which in addition presupposes the equilibrium to be stable); they may therefore be of limited applicability for dealing with time-variable phenomena as well as for determi...

We investigated the electrostatic charging behavior of submillimeter-sized dust particles located in Saturn's magnetosphere. The charging effects we considered included electron/ion capture from the magnetospheric plasma, electron/ion capture from the solar-wind plasma, the photoelectric effect from solar radiation, and secondary electron emission from energetic electrons. In our results, we sh...

[1] The solar wind interaction with a planetary atmosphere produces a magnetosphere-like structure near the planet whether or not the planet has an intrinsic global magnetic field. In the case of planets like Venus or Mars, which have no global intrinsic magnetic field but possess a significant atmosphere, a magnetosphere is induced in the highly conducting ionosphere by the time-varying magnet...