X-ray observations of MeV electron precipitation with a balloon-borne germanium spectrometer

Details X-ray observations of MeV electron precipitation with a balloon-borne germanium spectrometer X-ray observations of MeV electron precipitation with a balloon-borne germanium spectrometer

Dec 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002georl..29x..47m&link_type=abstract

Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 29, Issue 24, pp. 47-1, CiteID 2194, DOI 10.1029/2002GL015922

Physics

30

Magnetospheric Physics: Energetic Particles, Precipitating, Magnetospheric Physics: Magnetosphere-Inner, Trapped

Scientific paper

The high-resolution germanium detector aboard the MAXIS (MeV Auroral X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy) balloon payload detected nine X-ray bursts with significant flux extending above 0.5 MeV during an 18 day flight over Antarctica. These minutes-to-hours-long events are characterized by an extremely flat spectrum (~E-2) similar to the first MeV event discovered in 1996, indicating that the bulk of parent precipitating electrons is at relativistic energies. The MeV bursts were detected between magnetic latitudes 58°-68° (L-values of 3.8-6.7) but only in the late afternoon/dusk sectors (14:30-00:00 MLT), suggesting scattering by EMIC (electromagnetic ion cyclotron) waves as a precipitation mechanism. We estimate the average flux of precipitating E >= 0.5 MeV electrons to be ~360 cm-2s-1, corresponding to about 5 × 1025 such electrons precipitated during the eight days at L = 3.8-6.7, compared to ~2 × 1025 trapped 0.5-3.6 MeV electrons estimated from dosimeter measurements on a GPS spacecraft. These observations show that MeV electron precipitation events are a primary loss mechanism for outer zone relativistic electrons.

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