Meso-scale auroral forms, such as poleward boundary intensifications, streamers, omega bands, beads and giant undulations, are manifestations of dynamic processes in the magnetosphere driven, to a large part, by plasma instabilities in the magnetotail. New observations from ground- and space-based instrumentation and theoretical treatments are giving us a clearer view of some of the physical processes behind these auroral forms. However, questions remain as to how some of these observations should be interpreted, given uncertainties in mapping auroral features to locations in the magnetotatil and due to the significant overlap in the results from a variety of models of different plasma instabilities. We provide an overview of recent results in the field and seek to clarify some of the remaining questions with regards to what drives some of the largest and most dynamic auroral forms.

中文翻译：

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中尺度动态极光形式的物理过程

中尺度极光形式，例如极地边界强化、流光、欧米茄带、珠子和巨大的波动，是磁层中动态过程的表现，在很大程度上是由磁尾中的等离子体不稳定性驱动的。来自地面和空间仪器和理论处理的新观测使我们对这些极光形式背后的一些物理过程有了更清晰的认识。然而，鉴于将极光特征映射到磁极中的位置存在不确定性，并且由于不同等离子体不稳定性的各种模型的结果存在显着重叠，关于如何解释其中一些观察结果的问题仍然存在。