Ion temperature profiles in the horns of the plasma sheet

Abstract

The plasma sheet horns are the low‐altitude extensions of the plasma sheet that lie poleward of the plasmasphere and equatorward of the tail lobes. Within the horns, magnetic field lines of increasing geomagnetic latitudes map to increasing distances into the downtail plasma sheet. Plasma data from the fast plasma experiment on ISEE 2 have been analyzed for 11 outbound crossings of the horns in the premidnight sector of the magnetosphere at typical altitudes of ∼2–4 RE. These crossings typically occurred on time scales of less than 1 hour, providing almost instantaneous snapshots of plasma gradients within the horns. Ion temperatures observed during these crossings generally decreased by a factor of 4–8 as magnetic field lines of increasing geomagnetic latitude were traversed. If we make the reasonable assumption that the ion temperatures are constant along the field lines within the plasma sheet, then this result implies that the ion temperatures in the downtail plasma sheet also commonly decrease by this same factor over the radial range extending from the inner edge of the plasma sheet at the plasmapause boundary to the outer edge at a neutral line in the distant tail.