One of the key scientific issues of contemporary magnetospheric physics is to elucidate the processes that are responsible for particle acceleration in the auroral region. Acceleration of the particles along a magnetic field requires the action of an electric field which can either be an extended structure or confined to a shock-like structure in a narrow region called a double layer. This grant is to extend previous laboratory investigations of ion acoustic double layers to a plasma parameter regime that is useful for understanding auroral particle acceleration. The experiments consist of creating a series of ion acoustic double layers in a long magnetized plasma column and studying the acceleration of both ambient and test particles across them.
