Improved Hodograph Method and the Amplitude-Phase Gradient Method to estimate the latitude dependence of the FLR frequency, plasma density, and the resonance width using data from a ground magnetometer pair: Application to CARISMA and MAGDAS station pairs in North America

Abstract:

The Improved Hodograph Method (IHM below) and the Amplitude-Phase Gradient Method (APGM below) are both applied to data from two ground magnetometers latitudinally separated by ~100km and yield the field-line-resonance (FLR) frequency and the ionospheric resonance width as functions of the latitude; from the FLR frequency we can estimate the magnetospheric plasma mass density, and from the resonance width we can estimate the damping rate of FLR, which is related to how much of the FLR-generated ULF waves are absorbed by the ionosphere.

The both methods apply FFT to the two magnetometers' data, and calculate the amplitude ratio and the cross phase from the two stations' data as functions of the frequency. From there the two methods use different approaches: IHM fits a curve to the obtained ratio (as a complex number including both the amplitude ratio and the cross phase) on the complex plane to separate out the non-FLR signal in the data, while APGM assumes that the obtained amplitude ratio and cross phase include the FLR signal only and obtains the FLR frequency and the resonance width in an algebraic manner.

In this paper we apply the two methods to simultaneously observed data from ground station pairs of WAD (CGM latitude and longitude: 61.3 and 318.3) - WEYB (58.6, 320.9), LGRR (61.8, 332.4) - PINA (60.0, 331.8), and PINA - THRF (57.8, 331.5), where WAD belongs to MAGDAS/CPMN while the other four belong to CARISMA. We show that IHM can properly estimate the latitudinal profile of the resonance width (which is the improved point of IHM over the original Hodograph Method) by comparing the results of applying IHM to the LGRR-PINA and PINA-THRF pairs, located along the same meridian. We also compare the IHM and APGM results to support the above-stated advantage of IHM over APGM. In addition, comparing the results of applying IHM and APGM to WAD-WEYB and LGRR-PINA-THRF, having similar latitudes but different longitudes, we discuss the longitude dependence of the FLR frequency (from which we can estimate the magnetospheric plasma density on the meridional plane including the ground station pair) and the resonance width.