The double‐belt outer radiation belt during CME‐ and CIR‐driven geomagnetic storms

Abstract

We have identified eight events with double‐belt structure in the outer radiation belt from 110 coronal mass ejection (CME) driven magnetic storms and 223 corotating interaction regions (CIR) driven storms during 1994 to 2003 based on the SAMPEX data sets. Among them, three cases are related to CME‐driven magnetic storms and five cases are related CIR‐driven storms. All double‐belt structure events in the outer radiation belt are found during the recovery phase of a magnetic storm for both CME‐ and CIR‐related events—they usually start to form within 3–4 days after the onset of the magnetic storm. The preconditions needed to form a double‐belt structure, for all the CME‐related events, are found to be high solar wind dynamic pressure (Pdy) and southward interplanetary magnetic field Bz; nevertheless, for the CIR‐related events, they are found to be associated with high‐speed stream with southward interplanetary magnetic field, which is enhanced by a suitably orientated By component.It is further found that the flux distributions of the double‐belt structure can be fitted well with a simply exponential decay function of L∗. Based on the radiation belt content index, the proportion of the total number of 1.5–6.0 MeV electrons inside the position of maximum fluxes to that outside the maximum fluxes keeps rising during the double‐belt period, which implies that the acceleration mainly occurs at regions inside the location of maximum fluxes. We suggest that the plasmapause and the strong wave‐particle interactions with VLF and ULF waves near it play an important role in the development of the double‐belt structures.