Forsyth, C. and Fazakerley, A. N. and Rae, I.J. and Watt, C. E. J. and Murphy, Kyle R. and Wild, Jim and Karlsson, T. and Mutel, Robert and Owen, C. J. and Ergun, Robert and Masson, A. and Berthomier, M. and Donovan, E. and Frey, H. U. and Matzka, Juergen and Stolle, C. and Zhang, Y. (2014) In situ spatiotemporal measurements of the detailed azimuthal substructure of the substorm current wedge. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 119 (2). pp. 927-946. ISSN 2169-9402
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Abstract
The substorm current wedge (SCW) is a fundamental component of geomagnetic substorms. Models tend to describe the SCW as a simple line current flowing into the ionosphere towards dawn and out of the ionosphere towards dusk, linked by a westward electrojet. We use multi-spacecraft observations from perigee passes of the Cluster 1 and 4 spacecraft during a substorm on 15 Jan 2010, in conjunction with ground-based observations, to examine the spatial structuring and temporal variability of the SCW. At this time, the spacecraft travelled east-west azimuthally above the auroral region. We show that the SCW has significant azimuthal sub-structure on scales of 100~km at altitudes of 4,000-7,000~km. We identify 26 individual current sheets in the Cluster 4 data and 34 individual current sheets in the Cluster 1 data, with Cluster 1 passing through the SCW 120-240~s after Cluster 4 at 1,300-2,000~km higher altitude. Both spacecraft observed large-scale regions of net upward and downward field-aligned current, consistent with the large-scale characteristics of the SCW, although sheets of oppositely directed currents were observed within both regions. We show that the majority of these current sheets were closely aligned to a north-south direction, in contrast to the expected east-west orientation of the pre-onset aurora. Comparing our results with observations of the field-aligned current associated with bursty bulk flows (BBFs) we conclude that the structuring of the SCW cannot solely be due to BBF driven "wedgelets". Our results therefore represent constraints on future modeling and theoretical frameworks on the generation of the SCW.