Characteristic Times for Radiation Belt Drift Phase Mixing
- 1University of California, Berkeley, Space Sciences Laboratory, United States (solene@berkeley.edu)
- 2Air Force Research Lab, Kirtland AFB, NM, United States
One of the key assumptions of radiation belt modeling based on a three-dimensional Fokker-Planck equation is that trapped particle fluxes do not depend on the drift phase (i.e., the azimuthal angle, or magnetic local time, MLT). It is usually considered that MLT-dependent structures (such as particle injection signatures and subsequent drift echoes) are rapidly smoothed out by drift phase mixing. Yet, the characteristic times for radiation belt drift phase mixing are not well known.
In this presentation, we show the existence of a naturally occurring phase mixing process in the presence of field fluctuations. This process complements the observational phase mixing due to the finite resolution of the measuring instrument.
We present a first quantification for the characteristic time of natural phase mixing and we discuss the implications in terms of radiation belt modeling.
How to cite: Lejosne, S. and Albert, J. M.: Characteristic Times for Radiation Belt Drift Phase Mixing, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-10180, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-10180, 2023.