HR: 1340h
AN: SM13A-0333    [Abstracts]
TI: Determining Inner Magnetospheric Electric Fields From Particle Measurements
AU: * Samara, M
EM: msamara@swri.edu
AF: Southwest Research Institute, 6220 Culebra Road, San Antonio, TX 78238 United States
AU: Jahn, J
EM: jjahn@swri.edu
AF: Southwest Research Institute, 6220 Culebra Road, San Antonio, TX 78238 United States
AU: Henderson, M G
EM: mghenderson@lanl.gov
AF: Los Alamos National Laboratory, MS D466, Los Alamos, NM 87545 United States
AU: Fok, M H
EM: mei-ching.h.fok@nasa.gov
AF: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, MC 692, Bldg 21, Rm 248, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AB: Knowledge of both the magnetic and electric fields in the inner magnetosphere is necessary to understand the particle dynamics. These fields are responsible for the movement and acceleration of charged particles throughout that region. While our understanding of global magnetic fields has been enriched by means of a variety of magnetic field models, our understanding of the global electric field is lacking. We present a technique that attempts to calculate electric fields in the framework of the UBK theory. Under the assumption that the magnetic field is known, we can derive the electric field structure through the forward modeling of particle drifts, minimizing the difference between modeled and observed global plasma distributions. This approach could lend itself to simultaneous use of a wide variety of data sets (for example, ENA derived global plasma distributions, in situ multi-spacecraft particle measurements, in situ electric field measurements as local constraints, plasma pause boundary measurements from EUV imaging). We will discuss the capabilities and limitations of this approach, as well as its potential use for inferring magnetic fields.
DE: 2712 Electric fields (2411)
DE: 2730 Magnetosphere: inner
DE: 2753 Numerical modeling
SC: SPA-Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005