Determining energy pathways for the energisation of radiation belt electrons by very low frequency waves

Lead Research Organisation: Northumbria University
Department Name: Fac of Engineering and Environment

Abstract

We will investigate how the solar wind controls conditions inside Earth's magnetic bubble, known as the magnetosphere. In this region, the material is so tenuous that collisions between particles are very rare. Instead, the electrons and ions in near-Earth space undergo interactions with electromagnetic waves that change their energy and direction and can lead to significant electron acceleration to relativistic speeds. We will specifically investigate how the electromagnetic waves are energised by variability within the magnetosphere, driven by the variable conditions of the solar wind.
 
Description Our understanding of the hazardous near-Earth space environment requires knowledge of how electromagnetic waves affect the number and energy of high-energy electrons that are trapped in Earth's magnetic fields. Through this work, we have studied in detail the spatial and temporal variability of a range of different electromagnetic waves. We have shown that our previous models of the wave-particle interactions resulted from too much averaging of observations, and that a better route for modelling is to construct more detailed reconstructions of the wave and plasma conditions in space. Temporal variability in the governing equations changes the solution of the equations, and much more work is required to understand this behaviour, especially given the wild variation of the waves and plasma conditions.
Exploitation Route These findings should benefit the academic sector as it seeks to better understand wave-particle interactions in terrestrial space plasmas and in the plasma environments of other astrophysical objects. There is a credible pathway from these findings to improvement of operational space weather models, although this will require more funded research activity.
Sectors Aerospace

Defence and Marine

Environment
 
Title Data files for 'Temporal variability of quasilinear pitch-angle diffusion' 
Description Data in the three folders was used for "Temporal variability of quasilinear pitch-angle diffusion" Clare E. J. Watt" (2022),Hayley J. Allison,Sarah N Bentley,Rhys L Thompson,I Jonathan Rae,Oliver Allanson, Nigel P. Meredith,Johnathan P J Ross,Sarah A Glauert,Richard B. Horne,Shuai Zhang,Kyle R Murphy, Dovile Rasinskaite,Shannon Killey, Front. Astron. Space Sci. - Space Physics, DOI: 10.3389/fspas.2022.1004634 The data files contain the results and input for the ensemble numerical experiments described in the manuscript. There are 3 sets of experiments for 3 different L* locations. Each set of experiments has 6 different ?t (timescale of variability). Each experiment has 60 scenarios. In each folder, there are 60 files with phase space density as a function of pitch-angle (91 values) and time (121 values). There are also 60 files listing the series of index numbers for the random selection of diffusion coefficients used in each individual scenario. The index number refers to the lists at of diffusion coefficients archived at "PADIE diffusion coefficients for plasmaspheric hiss" (Watt et al., 2019) 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2022 
Provided To Others? Yes  
URL https://figshare.northumbria.ac.uk/articles/dataset/Data_files_for_Temporal_variability_of_quasiline...