Objectives: This project aims at improving our understanding of auroral acceleration and associated electrodynamic phenomena through multi-wavelength observations and models. The project team will model the entire auroral chain in the Earth’s magnetosphere-ionosphere system and explain the observations over a large range of wavelengths from the UV and optical spectra to radio wavelengths.

Methods: Four topics of research are proposed :

• Topic 1: use ground-based optical measurements with the ALIS auroral network to obtain two-dimensional energy fluxes of precipitating electrons, which will then be used to 1) characterize remotely the properties of the magnetospheric generator and, 2) to produce UV emission line profiles that can be compared to remote observations obtained with spacecraft (BIRA-IASB/LPAP/INASAN).
• Topic 2: use FUV observations from IMAGE to reach various goals: 1) use proton aurora observations in combination with superDARN radar data to estimate the location of the open-closed field line boundary, the open geomagnetic flux and the reconnection voltage at the dayside magnetopause and in the magnetotail, 2) upgrade the software to measure the same quantities using images of electron aurora, 3) compare FUV imaging with EUV remote sensing of the plasmasphere (LPAP)
• Topic 3: To model the whole auroral circuit in the Earth’s magnetosphere-ionosphere system in a self-consistent way. This is a complementary theoretical topic to topics1 & 2. (BIRA-IASB/LPAP/INASAN).
• Topic 4: develop an electromagnetic Vlasov simulation code able to model AKR emissions (BIRA-IASB).