Spectral characteristics of the plasma dispersionless injection during the storm recovery phase on 11 March 1998

Abstract

A substorm dispersionless injection event observed during the storm recovery phase on 11 March 1998 at geosynchronous orbit is carefully studied. The event shows the notable characteristics that for energetic ions the flux enhancement ratio before and after injection increases and remains elevated with increasing energy, while for energetic electrons it tends to decrease with increasing energy. In order to explain the unique injection feature, the authors propose a possible mechanism that velocity space diffusion in common to electric acceleration adjusts the particle injection state. Spectral characteristics of four different phases (pregrowth phase, the growth phase, the substorm expansion phase, and the recovery phase) have been investigated. The differential fluxes of electrons from 50 keV to 1.5 Mev and ions from 50 keV to 1.2 MeV measured by Synchronous Orbit Plasma Analyzer (SOPA) instrument onboard LANL satellite 1991–080 are found to be best fitted with the three‐parameter kappa distribution function (f ∼ A0 · E[1 + E / (κE0)]−κ−1) by Levenberg‐Marquardt and Universal Global Optimization methods. The evolutions of the three parameters in the above kappa distribution in different substorm phases have been depicted for both electrons and ions. In each phase, E0 and κ show an approximately linear relationship κ(E0) = κ0 + ηE0. This linear relationship can be obtained by solving the velocity space diffusion equation with an initial superthermal kappa distribution. Ion and electron are found to have opposite trend of parameters κ0 and η in each phase, which indicates that the different species of particles exert different velocity space diffusion processes so that their flux enhancement ratios before and after injection are rather different. This implies that not only electric field acceleration, but also velocity space diffusion plays a very important role in the particle injection.