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| Solar-Terrestrial Sciences |
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Information - ST5.4 Particle populations, electric currents and electromagnetic fields in the Earth's inner magnetosphere
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Event Information |
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This session will cover a wide range of observational, theoretical and modeling studies in the Earth's magnetosphere region inside 10 Re. Key points to be addressed are the relationships between different particle populations, the plasma sheet, ring current, plasmasphere, and radiation belts, their formation, interactions, and couplings during both quiet and disturbed conditions. Both theoretical and observational studies are welcome, especially those employing the new data sets from the IMAGE and Cluster missions. The region inside 10 Re includes the transition region between tail-like and dipole magnetic field lines where many important processes such as substorms occur. This is also the region where merging of two key current systems, the tail current and the ring current, takes place, a process that still contains many unresolved questions. Modeling works on the electric currents and magnetic fields in the inner magnetosphere are very welcome.
A large part of the ring current particles comes from the plasma sheet by particle transport in the large-scale and smaller-scale electromagnetic fields. Features of the storm-time ring current formation, the role of large-scale convection and substorm-associated injections, ring current ion composition, contributions to the Dst index and other issues on the ring current physics will be discussed in the session. In contrast, the plasmasphere has a direct ionospheric source. It builds up during quiet times as the inner magnetosphere corotates with the Earth, and then rapidly erodes during geomagnetic storms. The plasma distribution in this region is important to determine the resonant energy of wave-particle interaction. New observations and new mechanisms/ideas to model the plasmasphere and plasmapause have rejuvenated interest in this subject, and so the evolution of the plasmasphere is a featured topic of this session. The relativistic electrons on the outer radiation belt come from the plasma sheet, either by direct injection of energetic electrons or by the enhancement of an inner magnetospheric seed population and subsequent local acceleration. Deformation of the near-Earth magnetic field alters the drift paths of the energetic electrons, resulting in flux dropouts and local time asymmetries. Finally, all of these plasma populations are intimately linked through the electromagnetic fields and plasma waves. Discussions of this interplay during quiet times, substorms, and storms are particularly welcome.
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Preliminary List of Solicited Speakers |
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