Mesoscale Structures

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The objective of this proposal is to better understand the physics of the current sheet in the Earth's magnetotail. The PIs will clarify the role, as current carriers, of charged particles that do not obey the guiding center approximations. The study will concentrate on the detailed modeling of mesoscale structures rather than on an attempt to generate less exact models of the entire tail. A series of magnetic field models and corresponding model current sheets will also be developed. Finally, a specific magnetic field model will test the suggestion that variations in ion orbit types in the tail can be important to the generation of auroral field-aligned or Birkeland currents. ***