Energetic particle dynamics, precipitation, and conductivity

This chapter reviews cross-scale coupling and energy transfer in the magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere system via convection, precipitation, and conductance. It begins with an introduction into Earth’s plasma sheet characteristics including particles, plasma moments, and magnetic fields, and their dependence on solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field parameters. Section 4.2 transitions to observations of the magnetosphere convection, precipitation, and coupling with the ionosphere on multiple scales, with Section 4.3 focusing on related global modeling efforts for particle precipitation. This chapter describes basic concepts and principles of major pitch angle scattering processes—wave-particle interactions and field-line curvature scattering—as well as the resulting precipitation and conductance. Section 4.4 continues the discussion started in Sections 4.2 and 4.3 regarding the resulting ionosphere conductance, delving more deeply into empirical and data assimilative techniques. This chapter describes techniques used over the years to observe and model precipitation and conductance on multiple scales.