Observations of the impenetrable barrier, the plasmapause, and the VLF bubble during the 17 March 2015 storm

Observations of the impenetrable barrier, the plasmapause, and the VLF bubble during the 17 March 2015 storm

Van Allen Probes observations during the 17 March 2015 major geomagnetic storm strongly suggest that VLF transmitter-induced waves play an important role in sculpting the earthward extent of outer zone MeV electrons. A magnetically confined bubble of very low frequency (VLF) wave emissions of terres...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Baker, D. N., Jaynes, A. N., Mishin, E. V., Fennel, J. F., Li, X., Henderson, M. G., Kanekal, S. G., Foster, John C, Erickson, Philip J
Other Authors: Haystack Observatory
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2017
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/109263
Description
Summary:Van Allen Probes observations during the 17 March 2015 major geomagnetic storm strongly suggest that VLF transmitter-induced waves play an important role in sculpting the earthward extent of outer zone MeV electrons. A magnetically confined bubble of very low frequency (VLF) wave emissions of terrestrial, human-produced origin surrounds the Earth. The outer limit of the VLF bubble closely matches the position of an apparent barrier to the inward extent of multi-MeV radiation belt electrons near 2.8 Earth radii. When the VLF transmitter signals extend beyond the eroded plasmapause, electron loss processes set up near the outer extent of the VLF bubble create an earthward limit to the region of local acceleration near L = 2.8 as MeV electrons are scattered into the atmospheric loss cone.

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