SM23B-2545
Superthermal Electron Directional Fluxes and Their Pitch-Angle Distributions in the Region of the Diffuse Aurora
Tuesday, 15 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Louis Gregory Detweiler1, George V Khazanov2, Alex Glocer3, David G Sibeck4, Levon A Avanov3 and Elizabeth W. Himwich5, (1)Southern Oregon University, Ashland, OR, United States, (2)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Heliophysics Sci. Div., Greenbelt, MD, United States, (3)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (4)NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (5)Yale University, New Haven, CT, United States
Abstract:
Based on the model developed by Khazanov et al. (2014), we present the solution of the Boltzmann-Landau kinetic equation that uniformly describes the entire electron distribution function in the diffuse aurora, including the affiliated production of secondary electrons and their energy interplay in the magnetosphere and two conjugated ionospheres. In this investigation superthermal electron activity along the magnetic field lines that lie at a distance of 4.6 and 6.8 Earth radii from the Earth’s equator was considered. The major focus of this presentation is to study how both electrostatic electron cyclotron harmonic waves (ECH) and upper bounded chorus (UBC) and lower bounded chorus (LBC) whistler mode waves influence the superthermal electron directional fluxes and their pitch-angle distributions in the ionosphere and magnetosphere. This is achieved by numerically solving the Boltzmann-Landau kinetic equation with ECH, LBC, and UBC wave activity taken into account and comparing the results to the solution of the Boltzmann-Landau kinetic equation when only the influence of coulomb collisions is considered. We also discuss how the wave-particle interaction processes contribute to the energy balance of thermal and superthermal plasmas in the ionosphere-magnetosphere system.
