A search for electron scale structures across the magnetopause.

P. Canu (1) , Pierrette Décréau (2) , S. Escoffier (1) , N. Cornilleau-Werhlin (1) , D. Fontaine (1) , M. Dunlop (3) , Jean-Gabriel Trotignon (2) , Jean-Louis Rauch (2) , T. Carozzi (4)

1 CETP - Centre d'étude des environnements terrestre et planétaires
2 LPCE - Laboratoire de physique et chimie de l'environnement
3 RAL - STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
4 University of Sussex

Intense and localized burst of electrostatic emissions have been observed by the Whisper instrument on Cluster at frequency close to the electron plasma frequency, in the magnetopause boundary layer. The good time resolution of Whisper when in burst mode telemetry as well as the combination of the observations performed by the four Cluster spacecraft at short separation distance (~100 km) have allowed to determine in one case the dimension of these structure, typically a few tens of kilometers, close to the electron scale. We browse Whisper data in search for such events and present here some examples of their observations. We present the main characteristics of the spectra and power profile of the emissions.

Domaines: Astrophysique [astro-ph]; Physique des plasmas [physics.plasm-ph]

P. Canu, Pierrette Décréau, S. Escoffier, N. Cornilleau-Werhlin, D. Fontaine, et al.. A search for electron scale structures across the magnetopause.. Proceedings Cluster and Double Star Symposium – 5th Anniversary of Cluster in Space. ESA SP-598, Sep 2005, Noordwijk, Netherlands. ⟨hal-00157870⟩