Dusk side clockwise vortex generation and aurora intensity decrease after Solar Wind Dynamic Pressure Decrease

Abstract

<p>A solar wind dynamic pressure increase/decrease leads to the compression/expansion of the Earth’s magnetosphere. In response, field-aligned currents, which are carried by precipitating or escaping plasma particles, are generated in the magnetosphere and in lead to variations in the auroral intensity. In this study, we investigate magnetospheric and ionospheric responses (including magnetospheric plasma vortex, ionospheric currents and aurorae) to a sudden decrease in solar wind dynamic pressure (SW P<sub>dyn</sub>), which is critical for further understanding of the solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling. We focused on a SW P<sub>dyn</sub> decrease event that monitored by OMNI. A counter-clockwise plasma vortex was generated in the dusk side magnetosphere uncovered by using MHD simulation method and a clockwise equivalent ionospheric currents (EIC) vortex was generated in the dusk side ionosphere within about ten minutes after the pressure pulse arrival. Simultaneously, the observation results of Spherical Elementary Currents (SECs) showed that the EIC vortex region is dominated by downward field-aligned currents and the ground-based All-Sky Imager (ASI) observations in the vicinity of this EIC vortex showed that the aurorae diminished. These observations are consistent with the scenario proposed by Shi et al. (2014) that flow vortices in the magnetosphere generated by SW P<sub>dyn</sub> sudden decrease carry downward field-aligned currents into the dusk side ionosphere, generating ionospheric current vortex and thereby modulating auroral activity on the dusk side.</p>