Buoyancy Waves in Earth's Nightside Magnetosphere: Normal-Mode Oscillations of Thin Filaments

A theory has been developed for small oscillations of a thin filament in the magnetosphere. For the lowest-frequency even modes, the eigenfunctions are essentially buoyancy waves in the plasma sheet, but they are more like slow modes in the inner magnetosphere. For the lowest-frequency even modes, the eigenfrequencies (radians/s) have peak values of approximately 0.07 s-1 between the inner plasma sheet and plasmapause, for an average magnetospheric field. This includes software and model data used in this paper. Submitted to JGR for review