Date of Award

Winter 1988

Project Type

Dissertation

Program or Major

Physics

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

First Advisor

Richard L Kaufmann

Abstract

Dynamic processes on the ARCS3 flight involve six related coordinate systems: Rocket System, Local Geographic System, Local Geomagnetic System, Global Geographic System, Wave Vector System and Artificial Argon Beam System. The present thesis has found the relationships needed to carry out coordinate transformations between all these six coordinate systems. These coordinate transformations are used to investigate ion trajectories and the directional response of the detector OCTO4. A technique to calculate the 3-component acceleration of the main payload was completed, and the trajectory of the main payload relative to the sub payload was given. A method to use the measured spin plane component of the electric field to construct the full 3 dimensional electric field vector in the Local Geomagnetic System has been provided. A model to simulate the artificial argon beam distribution is proposed, and used to calculate the beam's flux, density and evolution.

Several kinds of plasma waves were observed by the University of Minnesota ACE detector. To explain the wave observations, a kinetic theory of plasma fluctuations was developed. This theory includes magnetized plasma species with or without parallel streaming. It is also valid for plasma including an unmagnetized two temperature plasma species that is streaming in any direction. As an application of the theory, the thermal fluctuations of the $O\sp+$ acoustic wave mode was calculated and compared with observations. The $O\sp+-He\sp+$ bihybrid mode is also evaluated and compared with the observed wave spectra.

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