Generation condition of the Upper-band and Lower-band chorus emissions in the Earth's magnetosphere

In the present study, chorus emissions have been analyzed on the basis of the nonlinear growth theory [1] in the Earth's magnetosphere. A rising-tone chorus emission is initially generated continuously in the frequency range from 0.1 to 0.7 fce0, where fce0 is the gyrofrequency in the generation region. Because of the nonlinear damping mechanism [2] the rising-tone chorus is separated into upper and lower bands at half the local gyrofrequency for the quasi-parallel propagation toward higher latitude (i.e. toward larger gyrofrequencies). Thus the lower cutoff of the upper-band chorus indicates half-gyrofrequency at the observational point (1/2 fce), whereas the upper cutoff of the lower-band chorus indicates half the gyrofrequency in the generation region (1/2fce0). We found an observational evidence of such characteristics of upper-band and lower-band chorus observed by the wave form capture (WFC) and the sweep frequency analyzer (SFA) onboard Geotail [3]. Mainly ';'lower-band-only chorus'' (only the lower-band emission exists) is observed and occasionally ';'dual-band chorus'' (both the upper-band and the lower-band emissions) is observed by Geotail. In this study, we statistically analyze the difference between the lower-band-only chorus and the dual-band chorus, using the SFA data obtained during October, 1992 and August, 2011. It has been confirmed that the dual-band chorus is generated because of the nonlinear damping at half the local gyrofrequency during the propagation. When the dual-band chorus propagates toward higher latitudes with its the upper-band part completely damped at half the local gyrofrequencies, the dual-band chorus becomes the lower-band-only chorus. We assume that the upper cutoff frequency of the lower-band chorus equals to the half-gyrofrequency in the generation region. When 0.7 fce0 (i.e. upper limit frequency of the chorus generation) is higher than local 1/2 fce, the dual-band chorus is possibly observed because the higher-frequency part of the upper-band chorus would not be damped. When 0.7 fce0 is lower than local 1/2 fce, the lower-band-only chorus is observed because the upper-band chorus is completely damped. References [1] Omura Y., Y. Katoh and D. Summers (2008), Theory and simulation of the generation of whistler-mode chorus, J. Geophys. Res., 113, A04223, doi:10.1029/2007JA012622. [2] Omura Y., M. Hikishima, Y. Katoh, D.Summers, and S. Yagitani (2009), Nonlinear mechanisms of lower-band and upper-band VLF chorus emissions in the magnetosphere, J. Geophys. Res., 114, A07217, doi:10.1029/2009JA014206 [3] S. Yagitani, T. Habagishi, S. Mori, Y. Omura, and H. Kojima, Generation and propagation characteristics of dual-band chorus emissions observed by Geotail, American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2012, December 2012, San Francisco, USA.