Modeling Density and Anisotropy of Energetic Electrons Along Magnetic Field Lines

Abstract

The electromagnetic wave growth or damping depends basically on the number density and anisotropy of energetic particles as the resonant interaction takes place between the particles and waves in the magnetosphere. The variance of both the number density and anisotropy along the magnetic field line is evaluated systematically by modeling four typically prescribed distribution functions. It is shown that in the case of ``the positive anisotropy'' (namely, the perpendicular temperature T⊥ exceeds the parallel temperature T||), the number density of energetic electrons always decreases with the magnetic latitude for a regular increasing magnetic field and the maximum wave growth is therefore generally confined to the equator where the resonant energy is minimum, and the number density is the largest. However, the ``loss-cone'' anisotropy of the electrons with a ``pancake'' distribution or kappadistribution keeps invariant or nearly invariant, whereas the ``temperature'' anisotropy with a pure bi-Maxwellian distribution or Ashour-Abdalla and Kennel's distributions decreases with the magnetic latitude. The results may provide a useful approach to evaluating the number density and anisotropy of the energetic electrons at latitudes where the observation information is not available.