Effect of Diurnal Convection on Trapped Thermal Plasma in the Outer Plasmasphere

A kinetic, multi‐species model of the plasmasphere is constructed that includes the effect of convection and corotation electric fields on trapped particles in drifting flux tubes. The resulting morphology of the outer plasmasphere is significantly different from the morphology obtained using the assumption of diffusive equilibrium. The difference is due primarily to the contraction and expansion of the region of velocity space accessible to the trapped particles, and has implications for the interpretation of remote sensing experiments

Thermal Plasmaspheric Morphology: Effect of Geomagnetic and Solar Activity

A multispecies kinetic model of the thermal plasma in the plasmasphere is used to predict the spatial dependence of the hydrogen ion and helium ion density and temperature for different levels of geomagnetic and solar activity. The particular convection electric field model chosen is intended for the time intervals between substorms. The plasma density and temperature in the equatorial plane are found to exhibit a local-time variation that is sensitive to the details of the convection electric field. In particular, the parallel temperature increases with altitude and the perpendicular temperature decreases with altitude, except in the postmidnight sector, features that are only possible if kinetic effects are taken into account. In addition, the ratio of the helium ion density to the hydrogen ion density is found to agree with observations of the Dynamics Explorer 1 satellite. This behavior can be explained by the effects of convection on the thermal particles that are magnetically trapped on closed field lines. These results have implications for the interpretation and analysis of sunlight scattered by helium ions (He II) to be measured by future global imaging satellites

Inversion of Plasmaspheric EUV Remote Sensing Data from the STP 72-1 Satellite

Observations of the extreme ultraviolet emission of helium ions at 30.4 nm can be used to study the global shape of the plasmasphere and its dynamical response to geomagnetic forcing. In order to retrieve number densities of plasmaspheric He+ from such observations, we have developed a new inversion technique based on discrete inverse theory, which uses the optical data to optimize a parameterized model of the He+ distribution. We apply this inversion technique to several orbits of data obtained from the Naval Research Laboratory extreme ultraviolet photometric experiment launched on the STP 72-1 satellite in October 1972. The inversion is limited to nighttime conditions where contamination from the topside ionosphere is minimal and where a simple parameterization of the He+ number density is applicable. We obtain excellent fits to the data; however, some of the retrieved model parameters have large uncertainties due to inadequate sampling of the plasmasphere. Our study shows that improved sampling using observations from different locations and view directions would significantly enhance the accuracy of the retrieved model parameters. Using a newly developed three-dimensional imaging tool to visualize the plasmaspheric regions being sampled remotely, we demonstrate that emission features observed from two of the STP 72-1 orbits originate beyond the plasmasphere. Estimated number densities of this feature are roughly consistent with observations of cold plasma seen at geosynchronous orbit by in situ experiments