Quasiperiodic field‐aligned current dynamics associated with auroral undulations during a substorm recovery

Abstract

AbstractA substorm recovery event in the early morning sector is explored by means of ground and spacecraft data. The ground data are provided by stations of the MIRACLE network, in northern Scandinavia and Svalbard, while spacecraft data are observed by the Cluster satellites, toward the end of the recovery phase. Additional information is provided by the Fast Auroral SnapshoT (FAST) satellite, conjugate to Cluster 3 (C3). A prominent signature in the Cluster data is the low‐frequency oscillations of the perturbation magnetic field, in the Pc5 range, interpreted in terms of a motion of quasi‐stationary mesoscale field‐aligned currents (FACs). Ground magnetic pulsations in the Ps6 range suggest that the Cluster observations are the high‐altitude counterpart of the drifting auroral undulations, whose features thus can be explored closely. While multiscale minimum variance analysis provides information on the planarity, orientation, and scale of the FAC structures, the conjugate data from FAST and from the ground stations can be used to resolve also the azimuthal motion. A noteworthy feature of this event, revealed by the Cluster observations, is the apparent relaxation of the twisted magnetic flux tubes, from a sequence of 2‐D current filaments to an undulated current sheet, on a timescale of about 10 min. This timescale appears to be consistent with the drift mirror instability in the inner magnetosphere, mapping to the equatorward side of the oval, or the Kelvin‐Helmholtz instability related to bursty bulk flows farther downtail, mapping to the poleward side of the oval. However, more work is needed and a better event statistics, to confirm these tentative mechanisms as sources of Ω‐like auroral undulations during late substorm recovery.