The Roles of Charge Exchange and Flow-Out Losses in Ring Current Decay

Details The Roles of Charge Exchange and Flow-Out Losses in Ring Current Decay The Roles of Charge Exchange and Flow-Out Losses in Ring Current Decay

Dec 2001

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001agufmsm51c..06k&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2001, abstract #SM51C-06

Physics

2760 Plasma Convection, 2778 Ring Current, 2788 Storms And Substorms

Scientific paper

It is becoming clear that flow-out losses are an important ring current decay mechanism in addition to charge-exchange losses. Flow out losses result from an imbalance between the energy flux entering the inner magnetosphere from the nightside plasma sheet and that leaving through the dayside magnetopause before the ring current becomes trapped on closed drift paths. The Michigan ring current drift-loss model (RAM) which calculates ring current losses due to Coulomb drag, charge-exchange and flow-out using realistic geocoronal and dynamical plasmasphere models, has been used to model 8 magnetic storms ranging from moderate to superstorm status. In each case, plasma sheet ion distributions measured by the LANL geosynchronous satellites are used to specify the ring current source population and its dynamical variation. The McIlwain (1986) model is used to specify the inner magnetosphere electric potential pattern which is scaled by the observed polar cap potential values (derived from DMSP passes directly or from the AMIE model) and shielded based on the DMSP auroral boundary index (MBI). Model results indicate that flow-out losses can be driven by an abrupt decrease in plasma sheet density, change in plasma sheet temperature and/or weakening of magnetotail convection prior to northward turning of the IMF. When the IMF abruptly turns northward at the end of the main phase, the entire recovery phase can result from charge-exchange loss. Examples of each of these types of decay are given. RAM decay time scales for all modeled storms are plotted against the simultaneous value of solar wind Ey and compared to the results of statistical studies of this relationship in the literature.

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