Adiabatic plasma convection in a dipole field: Proton forbidden-zone effects for a simple electric field model

Details Adiabatic plasma convection in a dipole field: Proton forbidden-zone effects for a simple electric field model Adiabatic plasma convection in a dipole field: Proton forbidden-zone effects for a simple electric field model

Sep 1976

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1976p%26ss...24..821c&link_type=abstract

Planetary and Space Science, Volume 24, Issue 9, p. 821-833.

Physics

5

Scientific paper

We here investigate proton motion in a simple field structure representing a lowest-order model of the convecting magnetosphere. The magnetic field is dipolar, while the equatorial electric field is a sum of corotation and uniform dawn-dusk convection components. Individual proton motion in these fields is quite complex but reasonably well understood, involving eastward, westward and banana-drifting regions of closed orbits, as well as open orbits running from the tail to the dayside. The physically significant description of these orbits is in terms of the division of velocity space at any point into regions containing particles having different orbit types. The most important division is that between open and closed orbits of various types. Inside the open region the plasma is expected to be the plasmasheet distribution mapped by conservation of μ and J. Outside, velocity space should be empty in a strictly time-independent situation. Thus the orbit-type bounding surfaces can, to a large extent, determine the outer zone (ring current) plasma properties. We here effect a full numerical solution of the orbit-type velocity-space transitions for protons, at arbitrary pitch angle and position. A comparison is made with recently published analytic approximations and with observations. Results for electrons were described in a previous paper.

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