Planting the Seed: Quantifying the Role of the Radiation Belt Source and Seed Populations

Abstract:

We investigate the source and role of lower energy electrons in the acceleration of radiation belt electrons. While many of the studies of outer radiation belt study focus on high energy relativistic (>1 MeV) electrons, the lower energy source (few keV) and seed (10s-100s keV) populations often control the generation of these higher energy electrons. This acceleration process begins with the source population generating the waves that can then accelerate the seed population up to relativistic energies. Previous studies[1] have shown that if one of these pieces is missing, the entire acceleration process breaks down. For this study, using data from both the Van Allen Probes and geostationary sources (GOES, LANL-GEO) we identify several interesting events that have different levels of seed and source populations. For these events, we investigate both the spatial and temporal evolution of both of these populations. In particular, we investigate the origin of these populations to see whether these populations originate in the magnetotail or if there is any evidence of local acceleration source in the inner magnetosphere. Ultimately, we quantify how differing inputs of source and seed electrons lead to acceleration (or lack thereof) in the radiation belts.

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[1] Jaynes et al. (2015)

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