Ring Current Modeling in a Realistic Magnetic Field Configuration

Abstract

A 3-dimensional kinetic model has been developed to study the dynamics of the storm time ring current in a dipole magnetic field. In this paper, the ring current model is extended to include a realistic, time-varying magnetic field model. The magnetic field is expressed as the cross product of the gradients of two Euler potentials and the bounce-averaged particle drifts are calculated in the Euler potential coordinates. A dipolarization event is modeled by collapsing a tail-like magnetosphere to a dipole-like configuration. Our model is able to simulate the sudden enhancements in the ring current ion fluxes and the corresponding ionospheric precipitation during the substorm expansion.