Some properties of Alfvén waves: Observations in the tail lobes and the plasma sheet boundary layer

We report properties of substorm‐related, globally excited Alfvén waves on a temporal scale of 6 to 300 s (3.3 to 167 mHz) at geocentric distances between 5 and 6 R E . The waves were observed in the tail lobes and the plasma sheet boundary layer (PSBL) by the Polar satellite. In each region we made the following observations: (1) The tail lobe Alfvén waves started at substorm onset as determined from ground magnetometer data. Hence these ULF...