Laboratory investigation of physical mechanisms of auroral charged particle acceleration in the field-aligned current layers Original Research Article

One of the major topics of space weather research is to understand auroral structure and the processes that guide, accelerate, and otherwise control particle precipitation and during substorms. The problem is that it is not clear the structure of the magnetic field-aligned electric fields and how they are supported in the magnetospheric plasma. The objective of this research is to study the physical mechanisms of these phenomena in a laboratory experiment. It should be achieved by simulating the charged particle acceleration due to field-aligned electrical field generation in all totality of the interconnected events: generation of a plasma flow, its evolution in the magnetic field, polarization of plasma, generation of the field-aligned currents, development of instabilities in the plasma and current layers, double layers or anomalous resistance regions appearance, electron acceleration. Parameters of the laboratory simulation and preliminary results of the experiment are discussed.