HR: 17:15h
AN: SM14B-06 INVITED    [Abstracts]
TI: Discovery of Very large Amplitude Whistler-mode Waves in the Outer Radiation Belt and Their Effects on Relativistic Particles
AU: * Cattell, C A
EM: cattell@fields.space.umn.edu
AF: School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, 116 Church St. SE, Minneapolis, MN 55416, United States
AU: Wygant, J R
EM: jwygant@fields.space.umn.edu
AF: School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, 116 Church St. SE, Minneapolis, MN 55416, United States
AU: Goetz, K
AF: School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, 116 Church St. SE, Minneapolis, MN 55416, United States
AU: Kersten, K
AF: School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, 116 Church St. SE, Minneapolis, MN 55416, United States
AU: Kellogg, P
AF: School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, 116 Church St. SE, Minneapolis, MN 55416, United States
AU: von Rosenvinge, T
AF: NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, United States
AU: Blake, J B
AF: The Aerospace Corporation, Space Sciences Department, Los Angeles, CA 90009, United States
AU: Bale, S D
AF: Space Science Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
AU: Roth, I
AF: Space Science Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States
AU: Temerin, M
AU: Hudson, M K
AF: Dept. of Physics, Dartmouth College, Honover, NH 03755, United States
AU: Mewaldt, R A
AF: Downs Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, United States
AU: Wiedenbeck, M
AF: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, United States
AU: Maksimovic, M
AF: LESIA, UMR CNRS 8109, Observatoire de Paris, Meudon, MD 92195, France
AU: Ergun, R
AF: Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Unversity of COlorado, Boulder, CO 20771, United States
AU: Acuna, M
AF: NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, United States
AU: Russell, C T
AF: Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, Uuniversity of California, Los Angeles, CA 20771, United States
AU: Lavraud, B
AF: ISR-1, Space Science and Applications, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, United States
AB: A longstanding problem in the physics of the Earth's radiation belts is determining the mechanism or mechanisms that accelerate electrons to relativistic energies and those that cause their loss. We report the discovery of obliquely-propagating whistler-mode waves in the radiation belt with electric field amplitudes (>250 mV/m) more than an order of magnitude larger than other whistlers. The waves were observed as STEREO-B traversed the dawn-side outer radiation belt, shortly after a substorm injection was observed by geosynchronous satellites. Simulations show that these large amplitude waves can energize electrons by the order of an MeV in less than 0.1s, explaining the rapid enhancement in relativistic electron intensities observed between the STEREO-A and STEREO-B encounters with the dawn-side outer radiation belt. The simulations also show that some electrons are scattered by large angles (10s of degrees) in a single wave encounter, suggesting that the relativistic electron microbursts observed simultaneously by SAMPEX are also due to the large amplitude whistlers. Our results show that the usual quasi-linear theoretical models of electron energization and scattering via small-amplitude waves, with timescales of hours to days, are inadequate for understanding radiation belt dynamics.
DE: 2772 Plasma waves and instabilities (2471)
DE: 2774 Radiation belts
DE: 2790 Substorms
DE: 7807 Charged particle motion and acceleration
DE: 7867 Wave/particle interactions (2483, 6984)
SC: SPA-Magnetospheric Physics [SM]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting