Electron acceleration in the radiation belts of Earth and Jupiter

Details Electron acceleration in the radiation belts of Earth and Jupiter Electron acceleration in the radiation belts of Earth and Jupiter

Aug 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007epsc.conf..711s&link_type=abstract

European Planetary Science Congress 2007, Proceedings of a conference held 20-24 August, 2007 in Potsdam, Germany. Online at ht

Physics

Scientific paper

Adiabatic radial diffusion alone cannot account for the generation of the relativistic electrons observed in the radiation belts of Earth and Jupiter. A local acceleration mechanism that can generate relativistic electrons in a dipole magnetic field is energy diffusion due to electron gyroresonance with whistler-mode chorus waves. Quasilinear theory predicts that for the Earth at L=4 the timescale for accelerating seed electrons of energy 100 keV to energies of several MeV by chorus diffusion is about 1 day. However,quasi-linear theory does not take account of nonlinear phenomena such as resonant wave trapping. Omura,Furuya,and Summers(2007) have extended the test-particle simulation of Omura and Summers(2006) and discovered a particularly efficient form of electron acceleration. The mechanism involves a special form of phase trapping by a whistler-mode wave and is called relativistic turning acceleration (RTA). In the Earth's outer radiation belt the RTA process can accelerate electrons of energy 100 keV to energies of a few MeV in a timescale of seconds to minutes dependent on the wave amplitude. Furuya,Omura,and Summers(2007) have demonstrated that the RTA process can take place for a wave packet with variable frequency such as that occurring in a rising tone of chorus emissions. RTA creates a high-energy tail in the electron distribution function. We show that RTA is a viable mechanism for generating relativistic electrons in the radiation belts of Earth and Jupiter.

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