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Transport of photoelectrons in the nightside magnetosphere
- Source :
- Journal of Geophysical Research. 107
- Publication Year :
- 2002
- Publisher :
- American Geophysical Union (AGU), 2002.
-
Abstract
- Kinetic modeling results are analyzed to examine the transport of photoelectrons through the nightside inner magnetosphere. Two sources are considered, those on the dayside from direct solar illumination and those across the nightside from light scattered by the upper atmosphere and geocorona. A natural filter exists on the nightside for the dayside photoelectrons. Coulomb collisions erode the distribution at low energies and low L shells, and magnetospheric convection compresses the electrons as they drift toward dawn. It is shown that for low-activity levels a band of photoelectrons forms between L = 4 and 6 that extends throughout the nightside local times and into the morning sector. For the scattered light photoelectrons the trapped zone throughout the nightside is populated with electrons of E less than 30 eV. At high L shells near dawn, convective compression on the nightside yields an accelerated population with electrons at energies up to twice the ionospheric energy maximum (that is, roughly 1200 eV for dayside photoelectrons and 60 eV for scattered light electrons). Modeled energy and pitch angle distributions are presented to show the features of these populations.
- Subjects :
- Atmospheric Science
Population
Soil Science
Magnetosphere
Plasmasphere
Electron
Aquatic Science
Oceanography
Physics::Geophysics
Geochemistry and Petrology
Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous)
Pitch angle
education
Earth-Surface Processes
Water Science and Technology
Physics
education.field_of_study
Ecology
Paleontology
Forestry
Photoelectric effect
Geophysics
Space and Planetary Science
Physics::Space Physics
Astrophysics::Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
Ionosphere
Atomic physics
Geocorona
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 01480227
- Volume :
- 107
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of Geophysical Research
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........cc724bd4edb2ece00f2a2e442fead039