Diffusion by one wave and by many waves

Abstract

Radiation belt electrons and chorus waves are an outstanding instance of the important role cyclotron resonant wave‐particle interactions play in the magnetosphere. Chorus waves are particularly complex, often occurring with large amplitude, narrowband but drifting frequency and fine structure. Nevertheless, modeling their effect on radiation belt electrons with bounce‐averaged broadband quasi‐linear theory seems to yield reasonable results. It is known that coherent interactions with monochromatic waves can cause particle diffusion, as well as radically different phase bunching and phase trapping behavior. Here the two formulations of diffusion, while conceptually different, are shown to give identical diffusion coefficients, in the narrowband limit of quasi‐linear theory. It is further shown that suitably averaging the monochromatic diffusion coefficients over frequency and wave normal angle parameters reproduces the full broadband quasi‐linear results. This may account for the rather surprising success of quasi‐linear theory in modeling radiation belt electrons undergoing diffusion by chorus waves.