MEASURING MAGNETIC FIELD IN THE 'DIAMAGNETIC' IONOSPHERE

Abstract

Satellite magnetometers sometimes pass through regions of plasma, such as the terrestrial ionosphere, where the ionization is large enough that some of the original ambient field is excluded from the plasma. This reduction of field inside the plasma region comes from the ‘diamagnetic’ effect of the charged particles in their helical trajectory around the magnetic field lines. The (container of the) magnetometer will exclude the plasma, and a simple-minded approach, treating the ionosphere in the same way as for a conventional diamagnetic fluid, predicts that the field seen by the magnetometer will be somewhat larger than the (reduced) field in the plasma. However, the ‘diamagnetic’ properties of the ionosphere are quite different from those of a conventional diamagnetic. In particular, there is a ‘reflection’ of the ionospheric charged particles at the surface of the magnetometer, and the overall effect is that the magnetometer does actually measure the field present in the plasma before the magnetometer is inserted. Similarly, any leakage fields from the magnetometer have no effect in the magnetosphere.