Abstract
In 1992, Chang suggested that substorm dynamics of the Earth’s magnetotail may be described by the stochastic behavior of a nonlinear dynamical system near forced or self-organized criticality (SOC). Subsequently, Chang (1997, 1998) demonstrated that multiscale intermittent turbulence of overlapping shear Alfvén and other plasma resonances is the underlying physics that can lead to the onset and evolution of substorms. Such a description provides a convenient explanation of the localized and sporadic nature of the bursty bulk flows that are commonly observed in the magnetotail (Angelopoulos et al., 1996; Lui, 1998). These concepts lead to a new paradigm for the understanding of the ever-elusive phenomenon of substorms. In this paper, we describe some of the basic physical concepts that play an important role in the development of these new ideas.
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Chang, T. (1999). Self-Organized Criticality, Multi-Fractal Spectra, And Intermittent Merging Of Coherent Structures In The Magnetotail. In: Büchner, J., Axford, I., Marsch, E., Vasyliūnas, V. (eds) Plasma Astrophysics And Space Physics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4203-8_24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4203-8_24
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