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Origins of the Earth’s Diffuse Auroral Precipitation

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Abstract

The Earth’s diffuse auroral precipitation provides the major source of energy input into the nightside upper atmosphere and acts as an essential linkage of the magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling. Resonant wave-particle interactions play a dominant role in the scattering of injected plasma sheet electrons, leading to the diffuse auroral precipitation. We review the recent advances in understanding the origin of the diffuse aurora and in quantifying the exact roles of various magnetospheric waves in producing the global distribution of diffuse auroral precipitation and its variability with the geomagnetic activity. Combined scattering by upper-and lower-band chorus accounts for the most intense inner magnetospheric electron diffuse auroral precipitation on the nightside. Dayside chorus can be responsible for the weaker dayside electron diffuse auroral precipitation. Pulsating auroras, the dynamic auroral structures embedded in the diffuse aurora, can be mainly caused by modulation of the excitation of lower band chorus due to macroscopic density variations in the magnetosphere. Electrostatic electron cyclotron harmonic waves are an important or even dominant cause for the nightside electron diffuse auroral precipitation beyond \({\sim}8R_{e}\) and can also contribute to the occurrence of the pulsating aurora at high \(L\)-shells. Scattering by electromagnetic ion cyclotron waves could quite possibly be the leading candidate responsible for the ion precipitation (especially the reversed-type events of the energy-latitude dispersion) in the regions of the central plasma sheet and ring current. We conclude the review with a summary of current understanding, outstanding questions, and a number of suggestions for future research.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the support from the NSFC grants 41204120, 41474141, 41474139 and 41274167, from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities grant 2042014kf0251 and 2042014kf0269, from the Project funded by the SOA Key Laboratory for Polar Science, and from the Project Supported by the Specialized Research Fund for State Key Laboratories. B. Ni thanks Jun Liang, Xing Cao, Vassilis Angelopoulos, Yuri Shprits, Richard Horne, Nigel Meredith, Eric Donovan, Wen Li, Yukitoshi Nishimura, Emma Spanswick, Marina Kubyshkina, Dirk Lummerzheim, Yusuke Ebihara, Allan Weatherwax, and Yoshizumi Miyoshi for valuable discussions and comments. BN also thanks Xing Cao for helping with the production of Figs. 16 and 17.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Space Physics, School of Electronic Information, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei, 430072, China

    Binbin Ni, Chen Zhou & Xudong Gu

  2. Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1565, USA

    Richard M. Thorne, Xiaojia Zhang & Jacob Bortnik

  3. Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1567, USA

    Xiaojia Zhang

  4. Institute of Space Physics and Applied Technology, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Zuyin Pu & Lun Xie

  5. SOA Key Laboratory for Polar Science, Polar Research Institute of China, Shanghai, 200136, China

    Ze-jun Hu & Desheng Han

  6. Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Newfoundland, A1C 5S7, Canada

    Run Shi

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  1. Binbin Ni
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Correspondence to Binbin Ni.

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Ni, B., Thorne, R.M., Zhang, X. et al. Origins of the Earth’s Diffuse Auroral Precipitation. Space Sci Rev 200, 205–259 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-016-0234-7

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