Access of the near-Earth electron plasma sheet to the inner magnetosphere seen by THEMIS

Details Access of the near-Earth electron plasma sheet to the inner magnetosphere seen by THEMIS Access of the near-Earth electron plasma sheet to the inner magnetosphere seen by THEMIS

Dec 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agufmsm43a1733k&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2009, abstract #SM43A-1733

Physics

[2730] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetosphere: Inner, [2760] Magnetospheric Physics / Plasma Convection, [2764] Magnetospheric Physics / Plasma Sheet

Scientific paper

The plasma sheet is the primary reservoir of hot plasma in the magnetosphere and believed to be the source region of ring current particles and precipitating particles generating aurorae. The plasma sheet is closely related to the configuration of particle distributions in the inner magnetosphere. However, previous studies on the configuration of the plasma sheet have been limited in the radial coverage in the equatorial plane (e.g. Korth et al. 1999 and Friedel et al. 2001). The purpose of the present study is to statistically examine the plasma sheet particles access to the inner magnetosphere and the dependence on geomagnetic activities. We have analyzed one-year data obtained by the Electrostatic Analyzer (ESA) on board the THEMIS satellite. Compared to previous observations about the inner boundary of the plasma sheet made by LANL and Polar, an advantage of THEMIS is their orbit that can cover the wide area from the plasma sheet to inner magnetsphere around magnetic equator. Another merit is that we can use the large data set obtained by the five identical spacecraft. We determined the inner boundary for plasma sheet electrons in the first adiabatic invariant range of 2 to 100 eV/nT, and compared them with Alfven boundaries that are evaluated from dipole magnetic field and Volland-Stern electric field model as a function of the Kp index. The results show that electrons penetrate deeper into the inner magnetosphere as the first adiabatic invariant decreases and Kp increases. Comparison of the observed and the calculated Alfven boundaries, the Alfven boundary are globally (especially on the night side) consistent with the averaged data in the inner magnetosphere, in agreement with the results by Korth et al. [1999] and Friedel et al. [2001]. It is also found that there are flux decreases in the dawn sector, suggesting that some wave-particle interactions cause losses of the plasma sheet electrons. In order to investigate possible loss processes of the plasma sheet electrons, we well estimate the lifetimes of the plasma sheet electrons based on THEMIS/ESA averaged data and compare them with theoretical calculations.

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