Unexpected high-frequency “birds”-type VLF emissions.

Abstract

The new typeof daytime natural VLF whistler mode emissions of the magnetospheric origin was recently found in the VLF observations at Kannuslehto station (L ~ 5.5) in Northern Finland.These VLF events occurred at the frequencies above 4-5 kHzeven up to 15 kHz. Here we present the different spectra of this peculiar daytime high-frequency VLF emissions observed under quiet geomagnetic conditions at auroral latitudes at Kannuslehto (Finland) and Lovozero (Russia) stations. These high-frequency waves cannot be attributed to typical well known VLF chorus and hiss. They became visible on the spectrograms only after the filtering out sferics originating by the lightning discharges and hiding all natural high-frequency signals. After this filtering, it was found a large collection of different natural VLF signals observed as a sequence of right-polarized short (less than 1-2 minutes) patches at frequencies above 4-5 kHz, i.e. at higher frequencythan a half the equatorial electron gyrofrequency at the L-shell of Kannuslehto and Lovozero. These emissions were called “birds” due to their chirped sounds. It was established that the “birds” are typically occur during the daytime only under quiet space weather conditions. But in this time, small magnetic substorms were could be observed in the night sector of the Earth. Here we also show the recently observed series of the “bird-mode” emissions with various bizarre quasi-periodic dynamic spectra, sometimes consisting of two (and even more) frequency bands. The “birds” occur simultaneously at Kannuslehto and Lovozero with similar spectral structure demonstrating their common source. It seems that the “birds” emissions are generated deep inside the magnetosphere at the low L-shells. But the real nature, the generation region and propagation behavior of these VLF emissions remain still unknown. Moreover, nobody can explain how the waves could reach the ground at the auroral latitudes like Kannuslehto and Lovozero as well as which magnetospheric driver could generate this very complicated spectral feature of the emissions.