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Recent proceedings in the radiation belt studies have proposed new requirements for numerical methods to solve the kinetic equations involved. In this article, we present a numerical solver that can solve the general form of radiation belt Fokker-Planck equation and Boltzmann equation in arbitrarily provided coordinate systems, and with user-specified boundary geometry, boundary conditions, and equation terms. The solver is based upon the mathematical theory of stochastic differential equations, whose computational accuracy and efficiency are greatly enhanced by specially designed adaptive algorithms and variance reduction technique. The versatility and robustness of the solver is exhibited in three example problems. The solver applies to a wide spectrum of radiation belt modeling problems, including the ones featuring non-diffusive particle transport such as that arises from nonlinear wave-particle interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general dispersion relation of obliquely propagating magneto-sonic (MS) waves for the inhomogeneous and anisotropic plasmas is analyzed including the effect of wave-particle interaction. The numerical analysis is performed without expanding both the plasma dispersion and the modified Bessel functions to highlight the effects of density inhomogeneity and the temperature anisotropy. The obtained results are compared with the recent work [Naim et al., Phys. Plasmas 22, 062117 (2015)], where only drift mode near the magnetosonic frequency is investigated. In our paper, we additionally analyzed two related modes depicting that the drift effect leads to an asymmetric behavior in the dispersion properties of drift MS waves. The possible application to the solar coronal heating problem has also been discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an editorial that discusses the circulation of heavy ions and their role in regulating the dynamics of near-Earth plasma. The research in this field has gained attention in recent years, with studies focusing on the composition of ions, their sources and sinks, and how they affect magnetospheric processes. The editorial synthesizes insights from five recent papers, which cover topics such as ion upflow during aurora events, atmospheric loss cone for energetic particles, magnetospheric mass density, nitrogen ion observations, and the dynamics of ion fluxes in turbulent magnetotail dipolarizations. These studies highlight the complexity and significance of heavy ions in understanding Earth's space environment and have implications in solar, ionospheric, and magnetospheric physics. [Extracted from the article]

Ion Bernstein modes, also known as magnetosonic waves in the magnetospheric community, are considered to play an important role in radiation belt electron acceleration. The detailed properties of perpendicular magnetosonic waves excited in the inner magnetosphere by a tenuous proton ring distribution are investigated in a two series paper with a combination of the linear theory and onedimensional particle-in-cell simulations. Here, in this paper, we study the properties of the excited magnetosonic waves under different plasma conditions with the linear theory. When the proton to electron mass ratio or the ratio of the light speed to the Alfven speed is small, the excited magnetosonic waves are prone to having a discrete spectrum with only several wave modes. With the increase of the proton to electron mass ratio or the ratio of the light speed to the Alfven speed, the lower hybrid frequency also increases, which leads to the increase of both the number and frequency of the excited wave modes. Meanwhile, the growth rate of these wave modes also increases. When the proton to electron mass ratio or the ratio of the light speed to the Alfven speed is sufficiently large, the spectrum of the excited magnetic waves becomes continuous due to the overlapping of the adjacent wave modes. The increase of the density of the protons with the ring distribution can also result in the increase of the growth rate, which may also change the discrete spectrum of the excited waves to a continuous one, while the increase of the ring velocity of the tenuous proton ring distribution leads to a broader spectrum, but with a smaller growth rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we perform one-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations to investigate the properties of perpendicular magnetosonic waves in a plasma system consisting of three components: cool electrons, cool protons, and tenuous ring distribution protons, where the waves are excited by the tenuous proton ring distribution. Consistent with the linear theory, the spectra of excited magnetosonic waves can change from discrete to continuous due to the overlapping of adjacent unstable wave modes. The increase of the proton to electron mass ratio, the ratio of the light speed to the Alfven speed, or the concentration of protons with a ring distribution tends to result in a continuous spectrum of magnetosonic waves, while the increase of the ring velocity of the tenuous proton ring distribution leads to a broader one, but with a discrete structure. Moreover, the energization of both cool electrons and protons and the scattering of ring distribution protons due to the excited magnetosonic waves are also observed in our simulations, which cannot be predicted by the linear theory. Besides, a thermalized proton ring distribution may lead to the further excitation of several lower discrete harmonics with their frequencies about several proton gyrofrequencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Test particle simulation is a useful method for studying both linear and nonlinear wave-particle interactions in the magnetosphere. The gyro-averaged equations of particle motion for first-order and other cyclotron harmonic resonances with oblique whistler-mode waves were first derived by Bell [J. Geophys. Res. 89, 905 (1984)] and the most recent relativistic form was given by Ginet and Albert [Phys. Fluids B 3, 2994 (1991)], and Bortnik [Ph.D. thesis (Stanford University, 2004), p. 40]. However, recently we found there was a (-1)Ɩ-1 term difference between their formulas of perpendicular motion for the lth-order resonance. This article presents the detailed derivation process of the generalized resonance formulas, and suggests a check of the signs for self-consistency, which is independent of the choice of conventions, that is, the energy variation equation resulting from the momentum equations should not contain any wave magnetic components, simply because the magnetic field does not contribute to changes of particle energy. In addition, we show that the wave centripetal force, which was considered small and was neglect in previous studies of nonlinear interactions, has a profound time derivative and can significantly enhance electron phase trapping especially in high frequency waves. This force can also bounce the low pitch angle particles out of the loss cone. We justify both the sign problem and the missing wave centripetal force by demonstrating wave-particle interaction examples, and comparing the gyro-averaged particle motion to the full particle motion under the Lorentz force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]