Dynamics of the Open Closed Field Line Boundary

Abstract:

In most cases, large-scale features of the auroral distribution are the projection, along magnetic field lines, of corresponding magnetospheric features. The poleward boundary of the oval is a key example of such a feature. At almost all local times, this is most often interpreted as the ionospheric marker of the latitudinal transition between open lobe and closed central plasma sheet field lines. Earlier work by Blanchard et al. [J. Geophys. Res., 1995 & 1997] used ground-based photometric observations of 630 nm "redline" aurora and in situ particle observations from simultaneous DMSP overflights to demonstrate that the poleward boundary of the redline aurora is a particularly robust signature of the poleward boundary of the plasma sheet. Owing to the orbits of the DMSP spacecraft and the relative newness of the photometer program (CANOPUS) that provided the optical observations, the Blanchard results represent a limited sampling of magnetic local time and a limited number of events. In this paper we revisit the Blanchard et al study, using particle data from the NASA FAST satellite and the DMSP program, together with redline observations obtained by ground-based All-Sky Imagers. Our results indicate that the Blanchard technique for identifying the polar cap boundary holds true for essentially all magnetic local times on the night side, but that the picture is more nuanced than previously appreciated. Here we present these results, and discuss specific examples where the technique does not work (and explore why). Furthermore, this work is motivated by a new extensive network of highly sensitive redline imagers that has been deployed across northern and central Canada which provides high time resolution large-scale snapshots of the instantaneous polar cap boundary. This in turn enables us to explore magnetospheric dynamics at the interface between the lobe and central plasma sheet in fundamentally new and exciting ways.