Abstract
Evaluation of quasi-linear diffusion coefficients for whistler mode waves in a plasma with arbitrary density ratio
Air Force Research Laboratory, Space Vehicles Directorate, Hanscom Air Force Base, Massachusetts, USA
Techniques are presented for efficiently evaluating quasi-linear diffusion coefficients for whistler mode waves propagating
according to the full cold plasma index of refraction. In particular, the density ratio ω
pe
/Ω
e
can be small, which favors energy diffusion. This generalizes an approach, previously used for high-density hiss and electromagnetic
ion cyclotron waves, of identifying (and omitting) ranges of wavenormal angle
that are incompatible with cyclotron resonant frequencies ω occurring between sharp cutoffs of the modeled wave frequency
spectrum. This requires a detailed analysis of the maximum and minimum values of the refractive index as a function of ω and
, as has previously been performed in the high-density approximation. Sample calculations show the effect of low-density ratio
on the pitch angle and energy diffusion coefficients modeling the effect of chorus waves on radiation belt electrons. The
high-density approximation turns out to be quite robust, especially when the upper frequency cutoff is small compared with
Ω
e
. The techniques greatly reduce the amount of computation needed for a sample calculation, while taking into account all resonant
harmonic numbers n up to ±∞.
Received 15 October 2004; accepted 22 December 2004; published 22 March 2005.
Citation: (2005), Evaluation of quasi-linear diffusion coefficients for whistler mode waves in a plasma with arbitrary density ratio, J. Geophys. Res., 110, A03218, doi:10.1029/2004JA010844.
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