substorm current wedge

plural substorm current wedges

1. A sudden disruption of an azimuthally confined section of enhanced current across a magnetotail and its diversion to the auroral ionosphere via field-aligned currents.

   The substorm current wedge diverts part of the neutral sheet current along magnetic field lines through the ionosphere.

   2022, Wolfgang Baumjohann, Rudolf A Treumann, Basic Space Plasma Physics, page 117

   2 more examples

   In particular, the relative contributions of ionospheric Pedersen and Hall currents to field-aligned currents are evaluated in hoping to shed some new light on the ionospheric closure of the substorm current wedge.

   2000, Shin-ichi Ohtani, Ryoichi Fujii, Michael Hesse, Magnetospheric Current Systems, page 199

   These are all signatures of substorm current wedge formation, indicating that current wedge formation is more of a response to the current system and accompanying dipolarization of postonset plasmasheet flow bursts than to the process leading to substorm auroral onset. If this is the case, then, while substorm current wedge formation is critical to substorm expansion phase development, it may not be a critical aspect of the substorm onset process.

   2015, Yongliang Zhang, Larry J. Paxton, Auroral Dynamics and Space Weather, page 106