RESUMEN
Electrostatic solitary structures are generated by injection of a suprathermal electron beam parallel to the magnetic field in a laboratory plasma. Electric microprobes with tips smaller than the Debye length (λDe) enabled the measurement of positive potential pulses with half-widths 4 to 25λDe and velocities 1 to 3 times the background electron thermal speed. Nonlinear wave packets of similar velocities and scales are also observed, indicating that the two descend from the same mode which is consistent with the electrostatic whistler mode and result from an instability likely to be driven by field-aligned currents.
RESUMEN
The rank-ordered multifractal analysis (ROMA), a recently developed technique that combines the ideas of parametric rank ordering and one-parameter scaling of monofractals, has the capabilities of deciphering the multifractal characteristics of intermittent fluctuations. The method allows one to understand the multifractal properties through rank-ordered scaling or nonscaling parametric variables. The idea of the ROMA technique is applied to analyze the multifractal characteristics of the auroral zone electric-field fluctuations observed by the SIERRA sounding rocket. The observed fluctuations span across contiguous multiple regimes of scales with different multifractal characteristics. We extend the ROMA technique such that it can take into account the crossover behavior--with the possibility of collapsing probability distribution functions--over these contiguous regimes.