Identification

Title

Pitch angle scattering of energetic electrons by BBFs

Abstract

Field line curvature scattering by the magnetic field structure associated with bursty bulk flows (BBFs) has been studied, using simulated output fields from the Lyon-Fedder-Mobarry global magnetohydrodynamic code for specified solar wind input. There are weak magnetic field strength (B) regions adjacent to BBFs observed in the simulations. We show that these regions can cause strong scattering where the first adiabatic invariant changes by several factors within one equatorial crossing of energetic electrons of a few kiloelectron volts when the BBFs are beyond 10 R-E geocentric in the tail. Scattering by BBFs decreases as they move toward the Earth or when the electron energy decreases. For radiation belt electrons near or inside geosynchronous orbit we demonstrate that the fields associated with BBFs can cause weak scattering where the fractional change of the first invariant (mu(0)) within one equatorial crossing is small, but the change due to several crossings can accumulate. For the weak scattering case we developed a method of calculating the pitch angle diffusion coefficient D-alpha alpha.D-alpha alpha for radiation belt electrons for one particular BBF were calculated as a function of initial energy, equatorial pitch angle, and radial location. These D-alpha alpha values were compared to calculated D-alpha alpha for a dipole field with no electric field. We further compared D-alpha alpha values with that of stretched magnetic fields calculated by Artemyev et al. (2013, https://doi.org/10.5194/angeo-31-1485-2013) at r approximate to 7 R-E. Results show that scattering by BBFs can be comparable to the most highly stretched magnetic field they studied.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7d79fdf

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2018-11-16T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Copyright 2018 American Geophysical Union.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2023-08-18T19:19:06.079586

Metadata language

eng; USA