[1] Substorm auroral breakup often occurs on a longitudinally elongated arc at the end of a growth phase. We present an idealized high-resolution simulation with the Rice Convection Model-Equilibrium (RCM-E) to investigate how large-scale adiabatic convection under equilibrium conditions can give rise to an auroral arc. We find that a thin arc that maps to the magnetic transition region at r ~ 8 RE emerges in the late growth phase. The simulation implies that the arc in the premidnight sector is associated with a sheet of additional region 1 sense field-aligned current (FAC) just poleward of the main region 2 FAC, while the arc in the postmidnight sector is associated with the poleward portion of the main upward region 2 FAC. Explanations for the location and the thickness of the arc are proposed, based on the simulation.