Adiabatic Heating of Electrons in the Magnetospheric Current Sheetстатья
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Дата последнего поиска статьи во внешних источниках: 16 января 2019 г.
Аннотация:Electron dynamics and acceleration in an electromagnetic field configuration modeling the current sheet configuration of the Earth’s magnetotail region is investigated. A focus is made on the role of the dawn−dusk magnetic field component in the convection electron heating by an electric field. For numerical integration of a large number of test particle trajectories over long time intervals, the equations of motion written in the guiding center approximation are used. It is shown that the presence of a nonzero By magnetic field significantly changes the electron heating and allows electrons with small pitch angles to gain energy much more efficiently than the equatorial electrons. As a result, the convection heating in the current sheet with nonzero By leads to the formation of an accelerated anisotropic population of particles with energies higher than a few hundred electronvolts. The obtained results and spacecraft observations in the Earth’s magnetotail are compared, and possible limitations in the proposed model approaches are discussed.