The relations between density of FACs in the Plasma Sheet Boundary Layers and Kp index  

作　　者：CHENG ZhengWei SHI JianKui ZHANG TieLong DUNLOP Malcolm LIU ZhenXing 

机构地区：[1]State Key Laboratory of Space Weather, CSSAR, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China [2]Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz A-8042, Austria [3]SSTD, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, London SW7 2AZ, UK

出　　处：《Science China(Technological Sciences)》2011年第11期2987-2992,共6页中国科学（技术科学英文版）

基　　金：supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 40804031, 41074114, 40921063);the Specialized Research Fund for State Key Laboratories

摘　　要：We have studied 172 field-aligned currents （FACs） cases observed by the ClusterlI satellites when they crossed the plasma sheet boundary layer （PSBL） in the magnetotail from July to October 2001. We mainly analyzed the relationship between the characteristic of FACs at the PSBL in magnetotail and the Kp index. The main results indicated the followings： 1） In the different geomagnetic activity levels, the relative occurrence of FACs in PSBL increased monotonically with geomagnetic activity. 2） The density of FACs in PSBL increased monotonically with Kp index. In the storm main phase, the density of FACs increased dramatically, the maximum FACs approximately equaled 19.05 nA m-2 while Kp equaled 5.3） The variation of FACs density in PSBL was consistent with the variation of the Kp index. However, when AE〈800 nT, FACs density in PSBL increased with increasing AE, and when AE〉800 nT, it decreased with increasing AE. Therefore, our results suggested that the FACs density in PSBL had a closer correlation with Kp index.

关 键 词：field-aligned currents plasma sheet boundary layer Kp index AE index 

分 类 号：P427.33[天文地球—大气科学及气象学] TQ153.2[化学工程—电化学工业]