The Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument Suite and Integrated Science (EMFISIS) on RBSP

Abstract

The Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument and Integrated Science (EMFISIS) investigation on the NASA Radiation Belt Storm Probes (now named the Van Allen Probes) mission provides key wave and very low frequency magnetic field measurements to understand radiation belt acceleration, loss, and transport. The key science objectives and the contribution that EMFISIS makes to providing measurements as well as theory and modeling are described. The key components of the instruments suite, both electronics and sensors, including key functional parameters, calibration, and performance, demonstrate that EMFI-SIS provides the needed measurements for the science of the RBSP mission. The EMFISIS operational modes and data products, along with online availability and data tools provide the radiation belt science community with one the most complete sets of data ever collected.

Intense duskside lower band chorus waves observed by Van Allen Probes: Generation and potential acceleration effect on radiation belt electrons

“…The black line corresponds to f pe ∕f ce = 7.1 (comparable to the previous statistical results [Meredith et al, 2003;Li et al, 2009a]), with the total electron density n = ∑ 6 i=1 n i = 9.55 × 10 6 m −3 determined through the PSD-fitting process and the background magnetic field B = 140 nT observed by the EMFISIS instrument (see Figure 1f ). Note that the real-time measurement of upper hybrid frequency [Kletzing et al, 2013] gives the generally consistent value of f pe ∕f ce . The other colored lines correspond to four decreased or increased values of f pe ∕f ce (with respect to the reference value 7.1).…”

“…In this letter, we report an event of intense duskside lower band chorus waves observed by the Van Allen Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) [Mauk et al, 2013] Figure 1 gives an overview of this intense duskside chorus event recorded by the RBSP-B satellite on 2 October 2013. The wave magnetic power spectral distribution in the frequency range of 0.1 to 5.0 kHz was observed by the Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument and Integrated Science (EMFISIS) Waves instrument [Kletzing et al, 2013]; the suprathermal electron pitch angle distribution was collected by the Helium Oxygen Proton Electron (HOPE) [Funsten et al, 2013] and Magnetic Electron Ion Spectrometer (MagEIS) [Blake et al, 2013] instruments of the Energetic Particle, Composition, and Thermal Plasma (ECT) suite [Spence et al, 2013]; the magnetic field and electric field were detected by the EMFISIS Magnetometer and Electric Fields and Waves (EFW) [Wygant et al, 2013] instruments. During the time range from 04:50 UT to 06:00 UT, the RBSP-B satellite was located around the duskside low-latitude region outside of L = 5.…”

Near-Earth plasma sheet boundary dynamics during substorm dipolarization

“…1d). Figure 2 shows the Bz (northward) component of the magnetic field from GOES 13, 14, and 15 (Singer et al 1996), Van Allen Probe-A (Kletzing et al 2013), MMS 3 (Russell et al 2016), Geotail (Kokubun et al 1994), and Cluster 1 (Balogh et al 2001) and electron energy spectra from the MMS Energetic Ion Spectrometer (EIS) (Mauk et al 2014) and the Fast Plasma Instruments (FPI) (Pollock et al 2016) instrument together with the AU and AL indices. The electron energy spectra (panel f ) are a combined data product from the MMS1 EIS instrument for energy >25 keV and from the MMS3 FPI instrument for energy <25 keV.…”

Investigation of EMIC wave scattering as the cause for the BARREL 17 January 2013 relativistic electron precipitation event: A quantitative comparison of simulation with observations

“…Cold plasma density: Since the wave power is centered well below the He + gyrofrequency, the finite beta effect is ignorable [Chen et al, 2011[Chen et al, , 2013 and the cold wave dispersion relation is used in computing the diffusion coefficient. Since GOES 13 does not provide plasma density observations, we calculate the plasma density using the upper hybrid resonance (UHR) frequency provided by the Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument and Integrated Science (EMFISIS) [Kletzing et al, 2013] on the Van Allen Probes. At 03 UT, balloon 1G was shown by a plasmapause test particle (PTP) model [Goldstein et al, 2014] to be at the main plasmapause wrapped inside a residual plume (Figure 2).…”