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Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 14, 535-541, 2007
www.nonlin-processes-geophys.net/14/535/2007/
doi:10.5194/npg-14-535-2007
© Author(s) 2007. This work is licensed
under a Creative Commons License.


Spectral scaling in the turbulent Earth's plasma sheet revisited

Z. Vörös1,2, W. Baumjohann1, R. Nakamura1, A. Runov1, M. Volwerk1,3, Y. Asano4, D. Jankovičová2, E. A. Lucek5, and H. Rème6
1Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria
2Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Prague, Czech Republic
3Max-Plank-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Garching, Germany
4Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
5Imperial College, London, UK
6CESR/CNSR, Toulouse, France

Abstract. Bursty bulk flow associated magnetic fluctuations exhibit at least three spectral scaling ranges in the Earth's plasma sheet. Two of the three scaling ranges can be associated with multi-scale magnetohydrodynamic turbulence between the spatial scales from ~100 km to several RE (RE is the Earth's radius). These scales include the inertial range and below ~0.5 RE a steepened scaling range, theoretically not fully understood yet. It is shown that, in the near-Earth plasma sheet, the inertial range can be robustly identified only if multi-scale quasi stationary (MSQS) data intervals are selected. Multiple bursty flow associated magnetic fluctuations, however, exhibit 1/f type scaling indicating that large-scale fluctuations are controlled by multiple uncorrelated driving sources of the bulk flows (e.g. magnetic reconnection, instabilities).

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Citation: Vörös, Z., Baumjohann, W., Nakamura, R., Runov, A., Volwerk, M., Asano, Y., Jankovičová, D., Lucek, E. A., and Rème, H.: Spectral scaling in the turbulent Earth's plasma sheet revisited, Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 14, 535-541, doi:10.5194/npg-14-535-2007, 2007.   Bibtex   EndNote   Reference Manager    XML
 

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