Исследование стационарной магнитосферной конвекции / В. А. Сергеев [и др.] ; Акад. наук СССР, Кол. фил. им. С. М. Кирова, Поляр. геофиз. ин-т. – Препр. ПГИ 86-05-47. - Апатиты : Кольский филиал АН СССР, 1986.

1. Introduction Steady-state magnetospheric convection was a favourite sub ject of past theoretical studies concerning the magnetospheric physics. Even now, with increasing power of numerical methods realised on powerful computers, the steady state magnetosphere has the be3t chances to be properly modelled, because the transi ent phenomena lead to the extreme complications of the whole physical picture of the magnetospheric dynamics. At the same time, in the previous experimental case studies the accent was laid mostly on the dynamical processes within the ionospnere-magnetоsphere system. This is especially true for the studies of the magnetotail and its plasma sheet (PS), most of which were associated with the magnetospheric substorm concept. The steady state of the magnetotail plasma sheet was for a long time thought to be typical only for the quiet (ground) state of the magnetosphere. The main reason of such a situation is that the real magnetotail most of time operates just in a dynamical regime. Nevertheless, a few authors (cf. Caan et al., 1973, Sergeev, 1977, Pytte et al., 1978, Sergeev and Vorobjev, 1979) succeded to demonstrate the real existence of prolonged (few hours in dur ation) time intervals, during which no changes in both the mag netic and plasma sheet configuration were found in the magnetotail whereas pronounced convection-type activity (including DP-2 like pattern and intense both eastward and westward AE j' s) occured in th6 ionosphere. Unfortunately, these papers gave only scarce in formation on the properties of the steadily-convecting PS as well as on its relationship to the particle and field phenomena ob served at the ionospheric level. The signatures of steadily-convecting PS found in the cited case studies lead to a contradiction, when compared to the theor etical results concerning the stability of the magnetotail plasma sheet. So, the ideal MHD model, developed by Schindler and Birn (1982), predicts rather a time-dependent evolution of a magnetic field-plasna configuration having highly stretched field lines (as in the magnetotail) in the case wh?n the intense dawn-to-dusk directed electric field is imposed on the magnetotail. This gives a clear example how far we are from the appropriate understanding of the properties of ionosphere-eagnetotail system. 12