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Abstract The present study uncovers the fine structures of magnetosonic waves by investigating the EFW waveforms measured by Van Allen Probes. We show that each harmonic of the magnetosonic wave may consist of a series of elementary rising‐tone emissions, implying a nonlinear mechanism for the wave generation. By investigating an elementary rising‐tone magnetosonic wave that spans a wide frequency range, we show that the frequency sweep rate is likely proportional to the wave frequency. We studied compound rising‐tone magnetosonic waves, and found that they typically consist of multiple harmonics in the source region, and may gradually become continuous in frequency as they propagate away from source. Both elementary and compound rising‐tone magnetosonic waves last for ∼1 min which is close to the bounce period of the ring proton distribution, but their relation is not fully understood.
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Particle‐in‐Cell Simulation of Rising‐Tone Magnetosonic Waves
Abstract Recent observations have reported that magnetosonic waves can exhibit rising‐tone structures in the frequency‐time spectrogram. However, the generation mechanism has not been identified yet. In this paper, we investigate the generation of rising‐tone magnetosonic waves in the terrestrial magnetosphere using 1‐D particle‐in‐cell (PIC) simulations, in which the plasma consists of three components: cool electrons, cool protons and ring distribution protons. We find that the magnetosonic waves excited by the ring distribution protons can form a rising‐tone structure with frequency of the structure ranging from about0.5Ωlhto nearlyΩlh, whereΩlhis the lower hybrid frequency. It is further demonstrated that the rising frequency of magnetosonic waves can be accounted for by the scattering of ring distribution protons. Moreover, the rising‐tone timescale obtained by PIC simulation is compared with the satellite observation. Our findings provide some new insights to understand the nonlinear evolution of plasma waves in the Earth's magnetosphere.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1702805
- PAR ID:
- 10374740
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Volume:
- 47
- Issue:
- 18
- ISSN:
- 0094-8276
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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