Statistical characteristics of potentially chorus-driven energetic electron precipitation from POES observations

摘要

In this paper, using the Polar Orbiting Environment Satellites (POES) in the year 2011, we present global distributions of energetic electron precipitation (EEP) events that may be driven by lower band chorus waves. Since the footprint of plasmapause in the ionospheric height can basically be equal to midlatitude troughminimum, it can be identified through the global total electron contentmap. Then we distinguish events perhaps driven by chorus waves outside the plasmapause or those driven by hiss waves inside the plasmapause. Based on the simultaneous observations of EEP in the E1 0° (>30 keV) and E2 0° (>100 keV) channels from POES satellites, a total of 4455 potentially chorus-driven events are identified. The potentially chorus-driven events are mainly distributed from midnight to noon which is similar to the distribution of lower band chorus waves. As the level of geomagnetic substorm activity increases, the occurrence rate is higher, which could be due to excitation of chorus waves associated with substorm electron injection. During higher level of substorm, a large number of events occur in lower L shells. Besides, since the magnetosphere on the dayside is compressed and strong chorus waves are limited to the region where the ratio between the plasma frequency and electron gyrofrequency is less than 5, under the strong substorm, the events on the nightside are confined to lower L shells due to smaller electron gyrofrequencies relative to those on the dayside. The occurrence rate of the events on the dayside also increases with enhancement of solar wind dynamic pressure, which suggests that the solar wind dynamic pressure can contribute to the excitation of events on the dayside. The statistics of potentially chorus-driven events are helpful to analyze the distribution of lower band chorus waves and their contributions to the loss of energetic electrons in the inner magnetosphere.