Electron trapping in kinetic scale field line resonances

Damiano, Peter

Electron trapping in kinetic scale field line resonances

Friday, 9 March 2018: 08:30

Longshot and Bogey (Hotel Quinta da Marinha)

Peter A Damiano, Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, Princeton, NJ, United States, Christopher Carew Chaston, Univ California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States, Arthur Jean Hull, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States and Jay Johnson, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, MI, United States

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Abstract:

Kinetic simulations illustrate that parallel potential wells in kinetic scale field line resonances (KFLRs) can lead to trapping of electrons which is manifested as highly field-aligned plateaued electron distributions. In this presentation, we illustrate that the simulated features of this trapping agree well with the characteristics of electron distributions associated with KFLRs in the inner magnetosphere as observed by both the Cluster and Van Allen Probes spacecraft. We additionally consider the effects of wave amplitude and electron and ion temperatures on the evolution of the trapped electron populations and the characteristics of the electron distributions functions.