The time persistence of certain features of electron precipitation in the slot region

Abstract

An investigation is made of the short-term persistence of certain features of electron precipitation in the slot region: the total precipitating flux levels and the occurrence of peaks having strongly L-dependent central energies. The latter phenomenon is of special interest, since the peaks have been shown to be consistent with the idea that the responsible mechanism is wave-particle interactions with a narrow frequency band of waves. At a given magnetic local time the equivalent wave frequencies which may be responsible for the peaks are found to have statistically significant correlation coefficients between pairs of passes separated by 100 min or less. The total electron intensities of > 130 keV have significant correlation coefficients for separation times of 24 hours or less. These findings are consistent with a significant electron precipitation resulting from a slowly varying hiss band, in preference to a more random occurrence of discrete emissions.