Institute for Space Weather Sciences

Title:  Self-Consistent Modeling of Cross-Energy Coupling in the Inner Magnetosphere

Abstract:  In the near-Earth space environment space weather poses a significant risk to thousands of civilian and military satellites since the intensity of ion and electron fluxes can change by orders of magnitude in less than a day. Such nonlinear response of the space plasma environment is attributed to competing acceleration and loss processes, affecting the global state of the system on various spatial and temporal scales. In this talk, we discuss the dynamics of energetic particles in the inner magnetosphere and their strong coupling to the variations of the electric and magnetic fields. We present examples from global simulations, including the ring current-atmosphere interactions model with self-consistent magnetic field (RAM-SCB) we developed as part of the SHIELDS framework at LANL. Model results are compared with in situ plasma and field observations from the Van Allen Probes. We show that increased anisotropies develop in the ion and electron distributions due to transport from the magnetotail, and energy dependent drifts and losses, leading to plasma wave generation. The local acceleration of freshly injected electrons by plasma waves, occurring at the injection boundary, may be significant at energies as low as ~50 keV and could strongly impact the ring current and radiation belt flux enhancements. Implications for further model development and space weather forecasts are discussed.