Modeling of the cold electron plasma density for radiation belt physics

Abstract

This review focusses strictly on existing plasma density models, including ionospheric source models, empirical density models, physics-based and machine-learning density models. This review is framed in the context of radiation belt physics and space weather codes. The review is limited to the most commonly used models or to models recently developed and promising. A great variety of conditions is considered such as the magnetic local time variation, geomagnetic conditions, ionospheric source regions, radial and latitudinal dependence, and collisional vs. collisionless conditions. These models can serve to complement satellite observations of the electron plasma density when data are lacking, are for most of them commonly used in radiation belt physics simulations, and can improve our understanding of the plasmasphere dynamics.

Electron radiation belt safety indices based on the SafeSpace modelling pipeline and dedicated to the internal charging risk

“…Without a doubt, the GEO and MEO index results demonstrate the relevance of the SafeSpace sun-to-Earth pipeline. They also point at the importance of a time-dependent physical description of the outer electron belt, which necessarily requires an accurate description of VLF waves and plasma distributions (Ripoll et al, 2023). As a straightforward improvement to the pipeline, we recommend the integration of dropouts modelling (as done in Herrera et al, 2016), after taking care of the B z parameter estimation.…”

The Role of Plasmasphere in the Formation of Electron Heat Fluxes

“…As was mentioned in recent work by Pierrard, Botek, and Darrouzet (2021), “It is quite difficult to compare all the existing models, since some are purely empirical (e.g., Sheeley et al., 2001), based on data assimilation; some are an amalgam of different analytical relations (e.g., Gallagher et al., 2000), and others more physics‐based, e.g., the Dynamic Global Core Plasma Model (DGCPM) of Ober et al. (1997), the fluid model SAMI3 (Huba et al., 2008), or the Ionosphere‐Plasmasphere IP model (Maruyama et al., 2016)].” The different physics‐based (Mishin & Puhl‐Quinn, 2007) and statistical models of plasmapause (Ripoll et al., 2022) and of plasmasphere (Ripoll et al., 2023) were recently reviewed in view of simulating their interactions with the radiation belt particles.…”

Global Empirical Models of Wave Amplitudes and Normal Angles of Banded Plasmaspheric Hiss Obtained From Van Allen Probes Observations

“…In this paper, we choose AE* (3-hr averaged AE) as one of the model parameters instead of plasma density. AE* reflects the levels of substorm activities, which have strong correlations with plasma densities and plasmapause positions (Lv et al, 2022;Ripoll et al, 2022Ripoll et al, , 2023. AE* can also significantly influence the amplitude of hiss waves (Agapitov et al, 2020;Meredith et al, 2004).…”