Precipitation loss of Van Allen radiation belt electrons by hiss waves outside the plasmasphere

Abstract

Plasmaspheric hiss waves have been frequently invoked to explain the slow loss of the radiation belt electrons. However, the effect of hiss waves outside the plasmasphere on the radiation belt electrons remains unclear. Here, on the basis of Van Allen Probes observations and quasilinear simulations, we show that the hiss waves outside the plasmasphere are able to cause the significant precipitation loss of energetic electrons on a timescale of 1 day. In the event of interest, the hiss wave power spectra density reached up to \(10^{-6}~\mbox{nT}^{2}/\mbox{Hz}\), and the obtained pitch-angle diffusion coefficients are found to be \(10^{2}\)–\(10^{4}\) times larger than the momentum and cross diffusion coefficients. During a period of 1 day, the modeled hiss waves caused the depletion of 300–500 keV electrons by up to 10 times. These results suggest that the hiss waves outside the plasmasphere should be taken into account in the future radiation belt modeling.