The impact of cold electrons and cold ions in magnetospheric physics

Abstract

A review of the impact of the cold-ion and cold-electron populations in the Earth’s magnetosphere is presented. The cold populations are defined by total energy less than approximately 100 eV, i.e. in the energy range which is strongly affected by spacecraft charging and that often dominates the total plasma density. We also include the warm plasma cloak in the review, since it overlaps partially with the cold energy range and is a population that is still not well understood.The known impacts of cold ions and cold electrons that are discussed are: the source of hot magnetospheric plasma, solar-wind/magnetosphere coupling, magnetotail reconnection and substorms, Kelvin–Helmholtz instabilities on the magnetopause, chorus, hiss, electromagnetic-ion-cyclotron and ultra-low-frequency wave–particle interactions, aurora structuring and spacecraft charging. Other possible impacts are associated with refilling on open-drift trajectories, the remnant layer and plasmapause disruption. A discussion of the difficulty of cold-plasma measurements and the need for new measurement techniques that measure the full cold-ion and cold-electron distribution functions is also presented.There remain a lot of unknowns about the cold-ion and cold-electron populations, associated with their origin, properties, drivers and impacts. These populations will need to be fully understood before the magnetosphere–ionosphere system can be fully understood.