Far ultraviolet observations of diffuse, monoenergetic, and broadband auroras

Discrete auroras, with unique shapes embedded in diffuse auroras, are generally associated with precipitating electrons that originate from the plasma sheet and are accelerated on the way as they travel to polar regions along the field lines. Two acceleration mechanisms have been proposed: quasi-static electric fields and dispersive Alfven waves, which are believed to yield monoenergetic peaks and broadband features in the particle spectra, respectively. Hence, it should be interesting to see how the two different mechanisms, through their characteristic spectra of the accelerated electrons, produce distinct auroral images and spectra, especially in the far ultraviolet (FUV) wavelengths as the long and short Lyman-Birge-Hopfield (LBH) bands exist as well as the strong absorption band of molecular oxygen in the FUV band. In fact, we have previously shown, using the simultaneous observations of precipitating electrons and the corresponding FUV spectra, that the discrete auroras associated with inverted-V events have a stronger relative intensity of the long LBH to the short LBH compared to diffuse auroras, especially when the peak energy is above a few keV. In this paper, we would like to focus on the differences in the FUV images and spectra between the two discrete auroras of the monoenergetic and broadband cases, again based on the study using the dataset of simultaneous observations of particles and FUV spectral images.