Self‐consistent model of magnetospheric ring current and propagating electromagnetic ion cyclotron waves: Waves in multi‐ion magnetosphere

Abstract

The further development of a self‐consistent theoretical model of interacting ring current ions and electromagnetic ion cyclotron waves (Khazanov et al., 2003) is presented. In order to adequately take into account wave propagation and refraction in a multi‐ion magnetosphere, we explicitly include the ray tracing equations in our previous self‐consistent model and use the general form of the wave kinetic equation. This is a major new feature of the present model and, to the best of our knowledge, the ray tracing equations for the first time are explicitly employed on a global magnetospheric scale in order to self‐consistently simulate the spatial, temporal, and spectral evolution of the ring current and of electromagnetic ion cyclotron waves. To demonstrate the effects of EMIC wave propagation and refraction on the wave energy distribution and evolution, we simulate the May 1998 storm. The main findings of our simulation can be summarized as follows. First, owing to the density gradient at the plasmapause, the net wave refraction is suppressed, and He+‐mode grows preferably at the plasmapause. This result is in total agreement with previous ray tracing studies and is very clearly found in presented B field spectrograms. Second, comparison of global wave distributions with the results from another ring current model (Kozyra et al., 1997) reveals that this new model provides more intense and more highly plasmapause‐organized wave distributions during the May 1998 storm period. Finally, it is found that He+‐mode energy distributions are not Gaussian distributions and most important that wave energy can occupy not only the region of generation, i.e., the region of small wave normal angles, but all wave normal angles, including those to near 90°. The latter is extremely crucial for energy transfer to thermal plasmaspheric electrons by resonant Landau damping and subsequent downward heat transport and excitation of stable auroral red arcs.