2003-2004 Publications of SGO, Oulu unit

Physicist Alexander Kozlovsky

Space physics
The magnetosphere-ionosphere electrodynamics inferred from the radar and optical observations
The studies are related to one of the most important issues of solar-terrestrial physics that is the mechanisms of the energy and momentum transferring from the solar wind into the Earth's magnetosphere and ionosphere. The energy penetration occurs in the high-latitude dayside magnetosphere in the course of solar wind - magnetosphere interaction and leads to a variety of phenomena in the magnetospheric electromagnetic fields, plasma, and particle distributions.
The main product of the solar wind - magnetosphere coupling is the large-scale convection of the magnetospheric plasma. In the outer magnetosphere, the solar wind drives the plasma antisunward, and return flow occurs in the inner magnetosphere. The magnetospheric convection is mapped along magnetic field lines into the ionosphere. In the ionosphere, the convection can be observed by radars. The EISCAT (http://www.eiscat.com/) incoherent scatter radar systems in Tromsø-Kiruna-Sodankylä (UHF) (http://www.eiscat.com/tromso.html), Tromsø (VHF), and Svalbard (UHF) together with the CUTLASS (http://ion.le.ac.uk/cutlass
) radar system provide a large amount of experimental data on the plasma flows in the high-latitude ionosphere.
The other result of the solar wind-magnetosphere interaction is that the magnetosphere contains the hot plasma (energies in the keV range) coming from the solar wind or heated inside the magnetosphere due to transformations of the convection energy (acceleration and heating in the magnetotail). Precipitation of the high-energy particles creates auroras. The auroral phenomena are visible manifestations of the magnetospheric processes, which can be observed by ground based all-sky cameras (http://www.sgo.fi/Data/RealTime/ allsky.php). Cameras onboard satellites can observe a global auroral distribution (e.g., Polar satellite project (http://www.ess.washington.
edu/Space/ SpaceExp/POLAR/)).
The radar measurements combined with the auroral observations allow monitoring of the magnetospheric dynamics. Also, these experiments allow investigation of the key problems of the plasma physics.

Publications