[1] Recent observations have established that the magnetosphere is a system of natural complexity. The coexistence of multiscale structures such as auroral arcs, turbulent convective flows, and scale-free distributions of energy perturbations has lacked a unified explanation, although there is strong reason to believe that they all stem from a common base of physics. In this paper we show that a slow but turbulent convection leads to the formation of multiscale current filaments reminiscent of auroral arcs. The process involves an interplay between random shuffling of field lines and dissipation of magnetic energy on sub-MHD scales. As the filament system reaches a critical level of complexity, local current disruption can trigger avalanches of energy release of varying sizes, leading to scale-free distributions over energy perturbation, power, and event duration. A long-term memory effect is observed whereby the filament system replicates itself after each avalanche. The results support the view that that the classical and inverse cascades operate simultaneously in the magnetosphere. In the former, the high Reynolds number plasma flow disintegrates into turbulence through successive breakdowns; in the latter, the interactions of small-scale flow eddies with the magnetic field can self-organize into elongated current filaments and large-scale energy avalanches mimicking the substorm.
The magnetosphere undergoes a transition from a dipole-like to taillike structure in the antisunward direction. In this region, Alfvén ballooning instability has been considered as a leading candidate to be responsible for the onset and expansion phase of observed impulsive substorms. We apply the generalized Ohm's law in isotropic Hall-MHD equations and study the effect of heat flux on the ballooning modes under substorm circumstances. The set of partial differential equations is obtained for a general ballooning dispersion relation from which all classical Alfvén waves and fundamental ballooning modes are recovered, e.g., the decoupled shear Alfvén and magnetosonic modes, the classical ballooning instability in incompressible plasmas. In the absence of the heat flux, the ballooning mode is featured by the coupling of the two modes by the superposition of the independent Hall effect and the independent plasma inhomogeneity effect. By contrast, heat flux exerts its influence on the ballooning mode by updating the coefficients of the terms in the dispersion relation. The results expose that the growth rate ( BM ) has two branches. If k p is free, one branch shifts versus , while the other branch is damped substantially by the heat flux, leading to a more stable ballooning mode; if k c is free, one branch shifts little versus , but the other one has higher BM driven by the heat flux, leading to a more unstable ballooning mode.
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