Journal article
Temperature Dependence of Plasmaspheric Ion Composition
Journal of geophysical research. Space physics, Vol.124(8), pp.6585-6595
08/2019
DOI: 10.1029/2019JA026822
Abstract
We analyze a database of Dynamics Explorer‐1 (DE‐1) Retarding Ion Mass Spectrometer densities and temperatures to yield the first explicit measure of how cold ion concentration depends on temperature. We find that cold H+ and He+ concentrations have very weak dependence on temperature, but cold O+ ion concentration increases steeply as these ions become warmer. We demonstrate how this result can aid in analyzing composition data from other satellites without spacecraft potential mitigation, by applying the result to an example using data from the Van Allen Probes mission. Measurement of light ion concentrations above 1 electron volt (eV) are a reasonable proxy for the concentrations of colder (eV) ions. Warmer O+ ion concentrations may be extrapolated to colder temperatures using our fit to the statistical distribution versus temperature.
Key Points
Fractional H+ and He+ ion concentrations have extremely weak dependence on temperature
Fractional OO+ion concentration increases with temperature
For light ions, concentrations above 1 eV are a proxy for colder ions
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Temperature Dependence of Plasmaspheric Ion Composition
- Creators
- J. Goldstein - The University of Texas at San AntonioD. Gallagher - Marshall Space Flight CenterP. D. Craven - Marshall Space Flight CenterR. H. Comfort - University of Alabama in HuntsvilleK. J. Genestreti - University of New Hampshire at ManchesterC. Mouikis - University of New HampshireH. Spence - University of New Hampshire at ManchesterW. Kurth - University of IowaJ. Wygant - University of MinnesotaR. M. Skoug - Los Alamos National LaboratoryB. A. Larsen - Los Alamos National LaboratoryG D Reeves - Los Alamos National LaboratoryS. De Pascuale - Oak Ridge National Laboratory
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of geophysical research. Space physics, Vol.124(8), pp.6585-6595
- DOI
- 10.1029/2019JA026822
- ISSN
- 2169-9380
- eISSN
- 2169-9402
- Number of pages
- 1
- Grant note
- NASA Van Allen Probes mission (JHU/APL contract 967399 under NASA's prime contract NAS5‐01072) Southwest Research Institute (SWRI)
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 08/2019
- Academic Unit
- Physics and Astronomy
- Record Identifier
- 9984455283102771
Metrics
8 Record Views