Collisionless plasma modeling in an arbitrary potential energy distribution

Abstract

A new technique for calculating a collisionless plasma along a field line is presented. The primary feature of this new ion-exospheric model is that it can handle an arbitrary (including nonmonotonic) potential energy distribution. This was one of the limiting constraints on the existing models in this class, and these constraints are generalized for an arbitrary potential energy composition. The formulation for relating current density to the field-aligned potential as well as formulas for density, temperature, and energy flux calculations are presented for several distribution functions, ranging from a bi-Lorentzian with a loss cone to an isotropic Maxwellian. A comparison of these results with previous models shows that the formulation reduces to the earlier models under similar assumptions.