Field Line Distribution of Magnetospheric Density

Details Field Line Distribution of Magnetospheric Density Field Line Distribution of Magnetospheric Density

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufmsm11b0317d&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #SM11B-0317

Physics

2730 Magnetosphere: Inner, 2731 Magnetosphere: Outer, 2768 Plasmasphere, 2794 Instruments And Techniques

Scientific paper

This paper reviews statistical results on the field line distribution of electron density and mass density in the inner magnetosphere (for the most part limited to geocentric radius R > 2 R_E). The results for the electron density are based on spacecraft observations of electron density from plasma wave data, while the results for mass density are based on inferred field line distributions from the frequencies of toroidal Alfven waves observed by spacecraft and ground magnetometers. The most common functional form used to describe the field line dependence is a power law in radius, n = n0 (L R_e / R)^α. Results for the field line dependence of electron density indicate that on average α = 0--1 is appropriate in the plasmasphere, while α ~ 2--3 is appropriate in the plasmatrough. For mass density, the situation is somewhat different. At L = 5--6, α = 1 is appropriate. At L = 4--5, somewhat larger α ~ 2 may be better. Based on ground observations, even larger values of α may be appropriate at L < 4, presumably due to mass loading from the ionosphere. At large L values > 6, α = 1 does the best job of describing the field line dependence if the power law is used, but a more accurate description includes a local peak in mass density at the magnetic equator. These results indicate that the average field line dependence of mass density may be different than that of electron density due to the presence of heavy ions.

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