Radial Diffusion of Outer Radiation Belt Electrons - Quantifying the Relative Importance of ULF wave Electric and Magnetic Fields

Details Radial Diffusion of Outer Radiation Belt Electrons - Quantifying the Relative Importance of ULF wave Electric and Magnetic Fields Radial Diffusion of Outer Radiation Belt Electrons - Quantifying the Relative Importance of ULF wave Electric and Magnetic Fields

Dec 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011agufmsm13b2079o&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011, abstract #SM13B-2079

Physics

[2720] Magnetospheric Physics / Energetic Particles: Trapped

Scientific paper

MeV energy electrons are thought to be transported inwards from the plasma sheet into the radiation belts under the action of radial diffusion. Waves in the ultra-low frequency (ULF) band have frequencies which can be drift resonant with these electrons in the outer zone suggesting the potential for strong interactions, and enhanced radial diffusion. The diffusion coefficients depend on the power spectral density (PSD) of the waves electric and magnetic fields in space in the equatorial plane. Here we use over a solar cycle of ground magnetometer data to determined the electric field PSD in space and in-situ GOES and AMPTE data to obtain the magnetic field PSD. The diffusion coefficients derived from these PSD values allows us to quantify the relative importance of the electric and magnetic field diffusion terms. The commonly used analytic expressions presented in Brautigam and Albert [2000] indicate that magnetic diffusion dominates over the electric diffusion by over an order of magnitude. However, the magnetic diffusion coefficients we derive from the in-situ PSD measurements indicate that the Brautigam and Albert [2000] magnetic diffusion term is over an order of magnitude too high and that during high Kp intervals at L<4 the electric field diffusion term can become over two orders of magnitude greater than the magnetic diffusion term. In addition, radial diffusion simulations of electrons driven by these diffusion coefficients will be presented illustrating that both the electric and magnetic field diffusion coefficients may play an important role in the dynamics and energization of the Earth's outer radiation belt region.

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