HELICAL MOTION OF CHARGED PARTICLES AND AURORA BORIOLIS

HELICAL MOTION OF CHARGED PARTICLES AND AURORA BORIOLIS In polar regions like Alaska and Northern Canada, a splendid display of colours is seen in the sky. The appearance of dancing green pink lights is fascinating, and equally puzzling. An explanation of this natural phenomenon is now found in physics, in terms of what we have studied here. Consider a charged particle of mass m and charge q, entering a region of magnetic field B with an initial velocity v.

Let this velocity have a component vp parallel to the magnetic field and a component vn normal to it. There is no force on a charged particle in the direction of the field. Hence the particle continues to travel with the velocity vp parallel to the field. The normal component vn of the particle results in a Lorentz force (vn × B) which is perpendicular to both vn and B.

As seen in Section . . the particle thus has a tendency to perform a circular motion in a plane perpendicular to the magnetic field. When this is coupled with the velocity parallel to the field, the resulting trajectory will be a helix along the magnetic field line, as shown in Figure (a) here.

Even if the field line bends, the helically moving particle is trapped and guided to move around the field line. Since the Lorentz force is normal to the velocity of each point, the field does no work on the particle and the magnitude of velocity remains the same. During a solar flare, a large number of electrons and protons are ejected from the sun. Some of them get trapped in the earth’s magnetic field and move in helical paths along the field lines.

The field lines come closer to each other near the magnetic poles; see figure (b). Hence the density of charges increases near the poles. These particles collide with atoms and molecules of the atmosphere. Excited oxygen atoms emit green light and excited nitrogen atoms emits pink light.

This phenomenon is called Aurora Boriolis in physics.