Energy transport in the auroral ionosphere and magnetosphere

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The flow of the solar wind around the Earth's magnetosphere leads to the storage of energy in the hot ionized gas or plasma and the magnetic fields surrounding the Earth.  This plasma regime starts about 100km above the Earth in the ionosphere and extends many tens of Earth radii into space.  The region dominated by the Earth's magnetic field is called the magnetosphere.  Auroral displays are one of the examples of the release of this stored energy into the upper regions of the Earth's atmosphere and ionosphere.  The research program focuses on two auroral phenomena, the auroral arc and the auroral or magnetic substorm.  Projects in the program include experimental, theoretical and computational studies of the energy transport in these space plasmas, with major thrusts in three directions, including the sources of ultralow frequency (ULF, 1-10 mHz, 100-1000 s period) shear Alfven, field line resonances (FLRs), the physics of FLRs and auroral arcs, and the physics of substorms in the magnetosphere and ionosphere.