We investigate the critical issue on how the BBF (bursty bulk flow) is related to the substorm current wedge formation. Observationally, after analysing data sets from Geotail spacecraft at near tail and many ground magnetic observatories for 9 months period of 1996, we find three BBF events that clearly occurred at the center of the wedge with region I type FAC (field-aligned current), and two other BBF events that were seen outside the wedge sector. Theoretically, we suggest that the substorm current wedge generation by BBF is most likely when the J⊥ · ∇B contribution is dominant in the well-known MHD JII expression (Vasyliunaus, 1984) or when the divergence of the cross-tail current carried by the particle's gradient/curvature drift is predominantly sufficient at the moment of the BBF arrival at near tail.

Magnetic reconnect ion is studied numerically by means of a two dimensional MHD code. The initial magnetic field configuration is the two-dimensional dipole field, and the simulation model involves magnetic reconnect ion driven by the magnetized plasma flow. Strong plasma jetting, plasmoid formation and its fast ejection are observed in the downstream region. The dependence of reconnection rate on the incoming energy flux is found to be very sensitive, while the magnitude of the resistivity does not influence much on the reconnection rate. The simulation results are discussed in the context of the geomagnetic substorm.

In this paper, we present observations of the Space Radiation Detectors (SRDs) onboard the Next Generation Small Satellite-1 (NEXTSat-1) satellite. The SRDs, which are a part of the Instruments for the study of Stable/Storm-time Space (ISSS), consist of the Medium-Energy Particle Detector (MEPD) and the High-Energy Particle Detector (HEPD). The MEPD can detect electrons, ions, and neutrals with energies ranging from 20 to 400 keV, and the HEPD can detect electrons over an energy range from 0.35 to 2 MeV. In this paper, we report an event where particle flux enhancements due to substorm injections are clearly identified in the MEPD A observations at energies of tens of keV. Additionally, we report a specific example observation of the electron distributions over a wide energy range in which we identify electron spatial distributions with energies of tens to hundreds of keV from the MEPD and with energy ranging up to a few MeV from the HEPD in the slot region and outer radiation belts. In addition, for an ~1.5-year period, we confirm that the HEPD successfully observed the well-known outer radiation belt electron flux distributions and their variations in time and L shell in a way consistent with the geomagnetic disturbance levels. Last, we find that the inner edge of the outer radiation belt is mostly coincident with the plasmapause locations in L, somewhat more consistent at subrelativistic energies than at relativistic energies. Based on these example events, we conclude that the SRD observations are of reliable quality, so they are useful for understanding the dynamics of the inner magnetosphere, including substorms and radiation belt variations.

In this paper we examine a total of 16 dipolarization events that were observed by THEMIS spacecraft in space close togeosynchronous orbit, r < ~ 7 RE. For the identified events, we examine the characteristics of the plasma flows and associatedbubbles as defined based on pV5/3, where p is the plasma pressure and V the volume of unit magnetic flux. First, we find thatthe flow speed in the near-geosynchronous region is very low, mostly within a few tens of km/s, except for a very few events forwhich the flow can rise up to ~200 km/s but only very near the dipolarization onset time. Second, the bubble parameter, pV5/3,decreases by a much smaller factor after the dipolarization onset than for the events in the farther out tail region. We suggestthat the magnetic dipolarization in the near-geosynchronous region generates or is associated with only very weak plasmabubbles. Such bubbles in the near-geosynchronous region would penetrate earthward only by a small distance before theystop at an equilibrium position or drift around the Earth.