Discovery of Very large Amplitude Whistler-mode Waves in the Outer Radiation Belt and Their Effects on Relativistic Particles

Details Discovery of Very large Amplitude Whistler-mode Waves in the Outer Radiation Belt and Their Effects on Relativistic Particles Discovery of Very large Amplitude Whistler-mode Waves in the Outer Radiation Belt and Their Effects on Relativistic Particles

Dec 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007agufmsm14b..06c&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2007, abstract #SM14B-06

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2772 Plasma Waves And Instabilities (2471), 2774 Radiation Belts, 2790 Substorms, 7807 Charged Particle Motion And Acceleration, 7867 Wave/Particle Interactions (2483, 6984)

Scientific paper

A longstanding problem in the physics of the Earth's radiation belts is determining the mechanism or mechanisms that accelerate electrons to relativistic energies and those that cause their loss. We report the discovery of obliquely-propagating whistler-mode waves in the radiation belt with electric field amplitudes (>250 mV/m) more than an order of magnitude larger than other whistlers. The waves were observed as STEREO-B traversed the dawn-side outer radiation belt, shortly after a substorm injection was observed by geosynchronous satellites. Simulations show that these large amplitude waves can energize electrons by the order of an MeV in less than 0.1s, explaining the rapid enhancement in relativistic electron intensities observed between the STEREO-A and STEREO-B encounters with the dawn-side outer radiation belt. The simulations also show that some electrons are scattered by large angles (10s of degrees) in a single wave encounter, suggesting that the relativistic electron microbursts observed simultaneously by SAMPEX are also due to the large amplitude whistlers. Our results show that the usual quasi-linear theoretical models of electron energization and scattering via small-amplitude waves, with timescales of hours to days, are inadequate for understanding radiation belt dynamics.

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