Estimating the corotation lag of the plasmasphere based on the electric field measurements of the Van Allen Probes

Abstract

The corotation electric field driving the plasmasphere to corotate with the Earth body is important in establishing the topology of the inner magnetosphere and is usually calculated by assuming a 24 h corotation period. However, studies have found that a plasmasphere corotation lag exists, suggesting an overestimation of the electric field driving the plasmasphere to rotate with the planet in previous calculations. In this study, we use electric field measurements from the Van Allen Probes mission from 2012 to 2018 to obtain the distribution of the large-scale electric field in the inner magnetosphere. A new method is developed to extract plasmaspheric rotation information from electric field measurements. Our results show that the electric field driving the plasmaspheric rotation varies with magnetic activity, decreasing with increasing Kp index. It is thus suggested that the corotation lag of the plasmasphere is more significant during magnetically active periods.