TY - Generic T1 - Field-Aligned Potential Drops in an Ionospheric Streamer T2 - HamSCI Workshop 2023 Y1 - 2023 A1 - Jason Derr A1 - Sina Sadegzadeh A1 - Richard Wolf A1 - Frank Toffoletto A1 - Jian Yang A1 - Weiqin Sun AB -

Field-aligned potential drops occur primarily in regions of strong upward field-aligned currents, where they can decouple the ionospheric and magnetospheric dynamics. They have been a challenge to incorporate into global magnetosphere modeling efforts. Low-entropy bubbles can form ionospheric streamers in the context of field-aligned potential drops. We have made a simple zeroth-order analytic model with order-of-magnitude reasonable field values. The model’s parameter space comprises resistivity, bubble asymmetry, conductivity enhancement, and an additional parameter which can be used to adjust the entropy profiles across the bubble. We are currently exploring this parameter space and examining the resulting differences between the resulting ionospheric and magnetospheric electric fields (including electric field-reversals).  An examination of whether bursty bulk flows or flow bursts are more likely to be responsible for streamers is ongoing.  Both previous runs of the Rice Convection Model and data are being used to fit parameters and examine reasonable parameter regimes.

JF - HamSCI Workshop 2023 PB - HamSCI CY - Scranton, PA ER -