Abstract
Wave coupling at contact discontinuities has an important bearing on the transmission of waves from the solar wind into the magnetosphere across the cusp region of the solar wind-magnetosphere boundary and on the propagation of geomagnetic pulsations in the polar exosphere. Keeping this in view, the problems of wave coupling across a contact discontinuity in a collisionless plasma, described by a set of double adiabatic fluid equations derived by Chew, Goldberger and LOW (1956) is examined. The magnetic field is taken normal to the interface and it is shown that total reflection is not possible for any angle of incidence. The Alfvén and the magneto-acoustic waves are not coupled. The transmission is most efficient for small density discontinuities. Inhibition of the transmission of the Alfvén wave by the sharp density gradients above the F2-peak in the polar exosphere appears to account for the decrease in the pulsation amplitude, on the ground, as the poles are approached from the auroral zone.
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