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COSMIC MAGNETS. “The ionosphere is coupled to the magnetosphere by highly structured and dynamic field-aligned currents, which on an average sense form a pair of large-scale field-aligned current sheets.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.12942/lrsp-2007-1 View in LinkedIn

GLOBAL CONVECTION. “The solar wind electric field drives a global convection pattern in the ionosphere, which produces convection electrojets carried by drift currents flowing eastward on the duskside and westward on the dawnside of the ionosphere. Consequently, the plasma flows from the dayside toward the nightside over the polar cap, returning to the dayside along the lower latitudes, consistent with the Dungey cycle.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.12942/lrsp-2007-1 View in LinkedIn

A THOUSAND CUTS. “The ring current decays via charge exchange processes and Coulomb collisions with the exospheric particles.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.12942/lrsp-2007-1 View in LinkedIn

RING CURRENT COMPOSITION. “During magnetically active times, ion outflow from the ionosphere is greatly enhanced, and consequently the ring current composition changes from being dominated by solar wind protons and doubly charged helium to consisting large percentages (up to dominating the mass and energy density) of ionospheric oxygen and to lesser amounts of singly charged helium.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.12942/lrsp-2007-1 View in LinkedIn

“THE RING CURRENT encircling the Earth roughly in the region 2–7 RE from the Earth consists of plasmas originating both from the solar wind and the ionosphere. The ring current typically consists of ions in the energy range from a few tens of keV to several hundred keV, and has a highly variable intensity controlled by the level of geomagnetic activity.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.12942/lrsp-2007-1 View in LinkedIn

BETWEEN ELECTRIC FIELDS. “In the vicinity of this boundary, the plasma density has a sharp gradient; this is known as the plasmapause. Particles inside the trapping boundary remain on closed drift paths around the Earth while those outside the trapping boundary drift under the dawn-to-dusk electric field to the dayside boundary and are lost in the outer magnetosphere and eventually to the solar wind.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.12942/lrsp-2007-1 View in LinkedIn

COLLIDING ELECTRIC FIELDS. “The Earth’s rotation sets up an electric field, which drags the cold plasma into a corotational motion. The interplay between the solar wind-imposed electric field and the corotation electric field creates a boundary inside of which particles are trapped on closed orbits around the Earth.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.12942/lrsp-2007-1 View in LinkedIn