Physics of the Earth's plasma sheet associated with substorm triggering

The plasma sheet of the Earth's magnetosphere is a sheet of hot plasmas in the magnetotail region, dividing the two (northern and southern) lobes of the Earth's magnetic field. It is the key region that is often closely linked to various electromagnetic dynamics in the Earth's magnetosphere-ionosphere system. In particular, it is the region that is most crucial for substorms, which is one of the most dynamic phenomena in the Earth's magnetosphere. The question of substorm triggering remains highly controversial until today, and at the center of the controversy there are several critical physics issues of the plasma sheet. In this talk I will introduce some of the physics issues of the plasma sheet. The specific topics that this talk will cover are (i) the general properties of the plasma sheet, (ii) fast plasma jets and plasma transport problem, (iii) stability/instability problem, and (iv) effects of thin current sheet. I will also present some of our group's recent findings regarding these topics, as obtained by comprehensive analyses of various observational data. The level and content of this talk are designed to be comprehensible to not only space physicists but also the scientists in a related field such as solar and heliospheric physics.