Short-duration Electron Precipitation Studied by Test Particle Simulation
Energy spectra of electron microbursts from 170 keV to 340 keV have been measured by the solid-state detectors aboard the low-altitude (680 km) polar-orbiting Korean STSAT-1 (Science and Technology SATellite). These measurements have revealed two important characteristics unique to the microbursts:...
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Published in | Journal of astronomy and space sciences Vol. 32; no. 4; pp. 317 - 325 |
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Main Authors | , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | Korean |
Published |
2015
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Energy spectra of electron microbursts from 170 keV to 340 keV have been measured by the solid-state detectors aboard the low-altitude (680 km) polar-orbiting Korean STSAT-1 (Science and Technology SATellite). These measurements have revealed two important characteristics unique to the microbursts: (1) They are produced by a fast-loss cone-filling process in which the interaction time for pitch-angle scattering is less than 50 ms and (2) The e-folding energy of the perpendicular component is larger than that of the parallel component, and the loss cone is not completely filled by electrons. To understand how wave-particle interactions could generate microbursts, we performed a test particle simulation and investigated how the waves scattered electron pitch angles within the timescale required for microburst precipitation. The application of rising-frequency whistler-mode waves to electrons of different energies moving in a dipole magnetic field showed that chorus magnetic wave fields, rather than electric fields, were the main cause of microburst events, which implied that microbursts could be produced by a quasi-adiabatic process. In addition, the simulation results showed that high-energy electrons could resonate with chorus waves at high magnetic latitudes where the loss cone was larger, which might explain the decreased e-folding energy of precipitated microbursts compared to that of trapped electrons. |
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Bibliography: | KISTI1.1003/JNL.JAKO201535151810312 |
ISSN: | 2093-5587 2093-1409 |