Simulations of EUV and ENA magnetospheric images based on the Rice convection model

Edmond C. Roelof; Barry H. Mauk; Robert R. Meier; Kurt R. Moore; Richard A. Wolf

doi:10.1117/12.147630

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7 July 1993 Simulations of EUV and ENA magnetospheric images based on the Rice convection model

Edmond C. Roelof, Barry H. Mauk, Robert R. Meier, Kurt R. Moore, Richard A. Wolf

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Proceedings Volume 2008, Instrumentation for Magnetospheric Imagery II; (1993) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.147630
Event: SPIE's 1993 International Symposium on Optics, Imaging, and Instrumentation, 1993, San Diego, CA, United States

Abstract

The development of instrumentation for magnetosphenc imagery and the design of future missions demands increasingly realistic simulations of the EUV and ENA emissions from magnetospheric ion populations. Relatively "cold" ion populations (E<5OeV) that fill the plasmasphere can, in principle, be imaged in the re-radiated solar lines of He+(304A) and O+(834A). "Hot" ion populations (E<lkeV) can be imaged using the energetic neuiral atoms produced when energelic singly-charged ions are neutralized in a charge-exchange collision with the cloud of exospheric H-atoms (the hydrogen geocorona) that suffuses the magnetosphere. We have responded to the need for increasing realism in simulations by incorporating elements of the Rice Convection Model (RCM) of magnetospheric dynamics into our images. The model, developed over the past decade by the Rice University, takes as its inputs the variation of measured magnetospheric indices and follows the transport and energy changes of the ion populations over the evolution of magnetic storms. We actually use a stream-lined version of the RCM, called the Magnetic Specification Model (MSM) that does not compute a self-consistent electric field, but utilizes phenomenological convection pauerns. The result is a sequence of simulated images as they would be obtained throughout a magnetic storm along a representative spacecraft orbit. These images set the requirements for sensitivity, angular resolution, energy pass-bands, etc., that must be met by imaging instruments on future magnetospheric missions. We then address the critical question of the extraction from the images of physical parameters describing the ion distribution functions. We report our progress in the development of computer-automated algorithms that extract the optimal set of parameters by minimizing a difference function between images simulated from a mathematical model of the ion distribution and "data" images simulated from MSM runs using inputs from actual geomagnetic storms.

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Edmond C. Roelof, Barry H. Mauk, Robert R. Meier, Kurt R. Moore, and Richard A. Wolf "Simulations of EUV and ENA magnetospheric images based on the Rice convection model", Proc. SPIE 2008, Instrumentation for Magnetospheric Imagery II, (7 July 1993); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.147630

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