Fig. 2
From: A diagnosis of the plasma waves responsible for the explosive energy release of substorm onset
A comparison of the observational dispersion relation with solutions to the warm plasma dispersion relation in the near-Earth magnetotail using realistic plasma parameters. a Observational dispersion relation shown in colour, along with analytical solutions to the full warm plasma dispersion relation for an infinite uniform plasma (dashed lines—central dashed line shows solutions for a parallel wavelength of approximately 1.8RE, and the dashed-dot lines indicate parallel wavelengths of 1.8RE ± 10%). A sensitivity analysis of the solutions to the warm plasma dispersion relation with respect to varying the magnetic field, number density and temperature can be found in Method. b Observational growth rates (imaginary part of the frequency) as a function of wavenumber that demonstrate that these wavenumbers are growing exponentially, as would be expected in the linear stage of an instability
