HR: 08:40h
AN: SM41D-03 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: In Situ Acceleration Process for Radiation Belt Electrons
AU: * Thorne, R M
EM: rmt@atmos.ucla.edu
AF: Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, UCLA, 7121 MS, Box 951565, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1565 United States
AB: Geomagnetically trapped electrons can interact with magnetospheric plasma waves leading to pitch-angle scattering and energy diffusion. Intense waves are excited by the injection of plasmasheet particles into the inner magnetosphere during enhanced magnetospheric convection. Under appropriate conditions, wave energy can be absorbed by the high-energy electron population, leading to stochastic local acceleration. Acceleration of electrons to MeV energies can occur on timescales comparable to a day during resonant interactions with whistler-mode chorus emissions in the recovery phase of magnetic storms. Such local acceleration, which is most efficient in the low density region exterior to the Earth's plasmapause, is a universal process and should occur other planetary magnetospheres.
DE: 2716 Energetic particles: precipitating
DE: 2720 Energetic particles: trapped
DE: 2730 Magnetosphere: inner
DE: 2778 Ring current
DE: 2784 Solar wind/magnetosphere interactions
SC: SPA-Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005