On the location of causative atmospherics of very low latitude whistlers and their magnetospheric propagation mechanism

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to locate the causative atmospherics of very low latitude whistlers whose ionospheric exit regions have previously been determined at geomagnetic latitudes, 10°–13°, in order to aid our understanding of the magnetospheric propagation mechanism of very low latitude whistlers. It is found that the causative atmospherics of very low latitude whistlers are very widely distributed in a range from 500 to ∼2500 km from the conjugate point of whistler ionospheric exit region previously determined. This fact lends further support to our previous implication that magnetospheric preferred paths supporting field‐aligned propagation are extremely rare in occurrence and that there has existed a preferred and stable magnetospheric path in a very restricted location on the day of high whistler activity.