Affiliation:
1. Department of Electrical Engineering University of Colorado Denver Denver CO USA
2. Space Sciences Laboratory University of California Berkeley CA USA
Abstract
AbstractA Van Allen Probes observation of a high‐density duct alongside whistler‐mode wave activity shows several distinctive characteristics: (a)—within the duct, the wave normal angles (WNA) are close to zero and the waves have relatively large amplitudes, this is expected from the classic conceptualization of ducts. (b)—at L‐shells higher than the duct's location a large “shadow” is present over an extended region that is larger than the duct itself, and (c)—the WNA on the earthward edge of the duct is considerably higher than expected. Using ray‐tracing simulations it is shown that rays fall into three categories: (a) ducted (trapped and amplified), (b) reflected (scattered to resonance cone and damped), and (c) free (non‐ducted). The combined macroscopic effect of all these ray trajectories reproduce the aforementioned features in the spacecraft observation.
Funder
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Science Foundation
Publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)