Controlled experiment in the ionosphere with a rocket-borne plasma gun

A controlled active experiment was performed by a plasma gun on-board a rocket to study the plasma stream across the magnetic field in space. A mother and daughter system was employed. An 8 kV 0.8 μF (25 J) capacitor bank on the daughter rocket was discharged every 12 s and about 10¹⁶ ion and electron pairs were ejected. A plasma signal was detected on the electron temperature probe. The propagation speed of the plasma stream is estimated to be 10⁶ cm/s, considerably lower than that obtained in the prelaunch test. The amplitude of the plasma signal decays as the inverse square of the mutual distance between the mother and daughter rockets and this decay is much slower than the free streaming. The importance of the geomagnetic field on the plasma propagation in space is discussed.     

Dynamic nucleation process of shallow earthquake faulting in a fault zone

Two distinct phases are commonly observed at the initial part of seismograms of large shallow earthquakes: low-frequency and low-amplitude waves following the onset of a P wave ( P ₁) are interrupted by the arrival of the second impulsive phase P₂ enriched with high-frequency components. This observation suggests that a large shallow earthquake involves two qualitatively different stages of rupture at its nucleation.
We propose a theoretical model that can naturally explain the above nucleation behaviour. The model is 2-D and the deformation is assumed to be anti-plane. A key clement in our model is the assumption of a zone in which numbers of pre-existing cracks are densely distributed; this cracked zone is a model for the fault zone. Dynamic crack growth nucleated in such a zone is intensely affected by the crack interactions, which exert two conflicting effects: one tends to accelerate the crack growth, and the other tends to decelerate it. The accelerating and decelerating effects are generally ascribable to coplanar and non-coplanar crack interactions, respectively. We rigorously treat the multiple interactions among the cracks, using the boundary integral equation method (BIEM), and assume the critical stress fracture criterion for the analysis of spontaneous crack propagation.
Our analysis shows that a dynamic rupture nucleated in the cracked zone begins to grow slowly due to the relative predominance of non-coplanar interactions. This process radiates the P₁ phase. If the crack continues to grow, coalescence with adjacent coplanar cracks occurs after a short time. Then, coplanar interactions suddenly begin to prevail and crack growth is accelerated; the P₂ phase is emitted in this process. It is interpreted that the two distinct phases appear in the process of the transition from non-coplanar to coplanar interaction predominance.     

Quasi-static analysis of strike fault growth in layered media

We study the effects of structural inhomogeneity on the quasi-static growth of strike-slip faults. A layered medium is considered, made up of an upper layer bounded by a free surface and welded to a lower half-space with different elastic property. Mode III crack is employed as a mathematical model of strike-slip fault, which is nucleated in the lower half-space and then propagates towards the interface. We adopt FEM-β, newly proposed analysis method for failure, to simulate the quasi-statistic crack growth governed by the stress distribution in layered media. Our results show that along planar traces across interfaces a compliant upper layer has significant effects on promoting/suppressing crack growth before/after its extension into the layer and vice versa for a rigid one. This proposes a possibility that surface breaks due to strike-slip faulting could be arrested by deposit layers at the topmost part of the Earth's crust.     

Seismic radiation from dynamic coalescence, and the reconstruction of dynamic source parameters on a planar fault

The dynamic coalescence of two mode II cracks on a planar fault is simulated here using the elastodynamic boundary integral equation method. We focus on the complexity of the resultant slip rate and seismic radiation in the crack coalescence model (CCM) and on the reconstruction of a single crack model (SCM) that can reproduce the CCM waveforms from heterogeneous source parameters rather than coalescence. Simulation results reveal that localized higher slip rates are generated by coalescence as a result of stress interaction between the approaching crack tips. The synthesized seismic radiation exhibits a distinct coalescence phase that has striking similarities to stopping phases in the radiation and propagation properties. The corresponding SCM yields a singular increase in the stress drop distribution, which is accompanied by a sudden decrease in it across the point of coalescence in the CCM. This implies that the generation of high-frequency radiation is more efficient from coalescence than from stopping, although both phenomena exhibit the same strong  ω⁻²  -type displacement spectra.     

Simulation of the spontaneous growth of a dynamic crack without constraints on the crack tip path

The spontaneous growth of a dynamic in-plane shear crack is simulated using a newly developed method of analysis in which no a priori constraint is required for the crack tip path, unlike in other classical studies. We formulate the problem in terms of boundary integral equations; the hypersingularities of the integration kernels are removed by taking the finite parts. Our analysis shows that dynamic crack growth is spontaneously arrested soon after the bending of the crack tips, even in a uniformly stressed medium with homogeneously distributed fracture strengths. This shows that the dynamics of crack growth has a significant effect on forming the non-planar crack shape, and consequently plays an essential role in the arrest of earthquake rupturing.     

Electron beam emission from the EXOS-B (JIKIKEN) satellite as a powerful diagnostic tool in the magnetosphere

In an electron beam emission experiment on board the EXOS-B (JIKIKEN) satellite (200 V, 1 mA-maximum), several types of waves are strongly excited by the beam such as plasma frequency, upper hybrid frequency, electron cyclotron frequency, their harmonics and nonlinear coupling of these waves. Measurements of these waves give information on local plasma density and magnetic field strength and it is revealed that the electron beam emission from the spacecraft is a powerful diagnostic tool in the magnetosphere. A long term observation in this electron beam experiment has provided us with the average plasma density profile in the magnetosphere. It is also useful for the detection of the plasmapause. Plasma density measurements down to the order of 10 cm^–3 are possible. The instrument itself is very simple and compact, so that it will be a powerful plasma diagnostic tool in future magnetospheric and planetary explorations.     

Medium-scale traveling ionospheric disturbances observed by GPS receiver network in Japan: a short review

Medium-scale traveling ionospheric disturbances (MSTID) are wave-like perturbations of the ionospheric plasma with wavelengths of several hundred kilometres and velocities of several hundred metres per second. MSTID is one of the most common ionospheric phenomena that generally induce the perturbations of ionospheric total electron content (TEC) by ∼10¹⁶ electron/m², which corresponds to ∼54 ns (16.2 cm) delay at GPS L1 signal. In the past decade, several new characteristics on MSTIDs have been revealed by the TEC observations using the dense GPS receiver network in Japan. In this paper, we provide a short review of these new observations and summarize the morphological characteristics of MSTIDs in Japan.     

Earthquake Nucleation on Faults with a Revised Rate- and State-Dependent Friction Law

Recently Nagata et al. (J Geophys Res 117:B02314, 2012) have proposed a new version of rate- and state-dependent friction law (RSF) that seems to have eventually resolved all the previously known discrepancies in the existing RSFs from laboratory observations. The values of a and b, empirical RSF parameters determined by fitting the same laboratory experiments, have been revised to be five times greater and a newly noticed weakening effect by shear stress with a coefficient c has been introduced. By using this revised RSF, we reinvestigated a problem of 2D quasi-static nucleation on faults. A crack-like nucleation-zone expansion known for the ‘aging’ version of RSF is not sustainable with the ‘Nagata’ law, which is understandable as the Nagata law does not produce a slip-weakening distance proportional to the involved strength reduction, an aging law’s feature that contradicts laboratory observations. The later stage of Nagata-law nucleation shows localization of quasi-static slip within a limited spatial extent, but the localization is much milder than that predicted by the ‘slip’ version of RSF. With an appropriate c parameter of the Nagata law, the nucleation size seems to be reduced only by a factor from that of the aging law.     

Rayleigh scattering by aqueous colloidal silica as a cause for the blue color of hydrothermal water

Thermal waters in hydrothermal ponds, bathing pools and the brines of geothermal electric power plants commonly have a characteristic blue color. Although many researchers have assumed that the blue color is due to a colloidal suspension and/or absorption by dissolved ferrous iron or by water itself, there has been no specific effort to identify the physical nature of this phenomenon. We have tested, in synthetic and natural solutions, whether aqueous colloidal silica is responsible for the blue color. Aqueous colloidal silica is formed by silica polymerization in thermal waters of the neutral-chloride type which contain initially monomeric silica in concentrations up to three times above the solubilities of amorphous silica. The hue of the blue thermal waters in the pools tested agrees with that of a synthesized colloidal silica solution. Grain-size analyses of aqueous colloidal silica in the blue-colored thermal waters demonstrate that the color is caused by Rayleigh scattering from aqueous colloidal silica particles with diameters (0.1–0.45 μm) smaller than the wavelengths of visible radiation.