Bandwidths and amplitudes of chorus‐like banded emissions measured by the TC‐1 Double Star spacecraft

Abstract

AbstractCharacteristics of banded whistler‐mode emissions are derived from a database of chorus‐like events obtained from the complete data set of the wave measurements provided by the Spatio‐Temporal Analysis of Field Fluctuation‐Digital Wave Processing (STAFF‐DWP) wave instrument on board the TC‐1 Double Star spacecraft. Our study covers the full operational period of this spacecraft (almost 4 years). Our entire data set has been collected within 30° of geomagnetic latitude at L shells between 2 and 12 and below 4 kHz. All events have been processed automatically to accurately determine their power spectral density (PSD), bandwidth, and amplitude. We found most cases of chorus‐like banded emissions at L≤10 on the dawnside and dayside. The upper band emissions (above one half of the equatorial electron cyclotron frequency) occur almost 20 times less often than the lower band, and their average amplitude is almost 3 times smaller than for the lower band. Intense upper band emissions cover smaller L shell, magnetic local time (MLT), and magnetic latitudes regions than intense lower band emissions. The intense nightside and dawnside chorus‐like banded emissions were observed at low magnetic latitudes, while the intense dayside and duskside emissions were mostly found at higher magnetic latitudes. The amplitudes of dayside lower band waves slightly increase as they propagate away from the geomagnetic equator and are smaller than chorus amplitudes on nightside and dawnside. The PSD, the amplitude of the lower band, its frequency bandwidth, and its occurrence rate significantly increase with increasing geomagnetic activity, while all these parameters for the upper band are not so strongly dependent on the geomagnetic activity.