The wavelength of slow mhd waves observed in the night-side plasma sheet

The night-side plasma sheet is one of the key regions of the earth's magnetosphere. In the convection system, the plasma sheet is responsible for the earthward transport of the mass, momentum, and energy densities after the tail reconnection. The plasma sheet was thought earlier to undergo the way of steady, slow, and adiabatic earthward convection. As the flux tube is transported earthward, the plasma pressure inside the flux tube becomes too large, if the flux tube continues to hold the plasma inside it without a loss. This loss-less assumption equivalently mentioned that the motion inside the high-beta plasma sheet is dominated by the fast mode motion. Erickson and Wolf originally proposed that the substorm is the most promising process to resolve the inconsistency.