Supervisor : Prof Tim Yeoman (tim.yeoman@ion.le.ac.uk)

Details of Project

Launching in 2012, the NASA Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) mission will comprise two spacecraft in a string-of-pearls configuration in a near-identical, near-equatorial orbits with perigee at 600 km and apogee at 5.8 Earth radii, covering the entire radiation belt region.  Ultra Low Frequency (ULF) waves are an important mechanism for the energisation and loss of the highly energetic particles which make up the Earth’s radiation belts, but their global occurrence can only be measured from ground-based instrumentation.  In coordination with the RBSP mission, the University of Leicester will run a series of experiments on the SuperDARN radar array to investigate the occurrence of ULF waves in. This information will be combined with the in situ spacecraft measurements of the energetic particles and the magnetic and electric fields in the magnetosphere, in order to understand how these waves can lead to the creation of highly energetic particles, and also how they are implicated in the subsequent loss of these particles into the upper atmosphere.

The figure on the top shows a schematic of the radiation belts and the RBSP spacecraft.  Below is a plot of colour-coded SuperDARN radar measurements of the Doppler velocity of the ionospheric plasma during a ULF wave driven by energetic radiation belt particles  The two dimensional structure of the magnetospheric wave phenomenon is revealed by the ionospheric measurements. 

Sources of Data

The SuperDARN radars

Ground magnetometers

The RBSP spacecraft particle and field measurements 

Background Reading

Examples of research papers produced in this area by recent Leicester PhD students :

Borderick, J. D., T. K. Yeoman, C. L. Waters, and D. M. Wright, Observations and modelling of the wave mode evolution of an impulse-driven 3 mHz ULF wave, Ann. Geophys., 28, 1723-1735, doi:10.5194/angeo-28-1723-2010, 2010

Clausen, L. B. N., T. K. Yeoman, R. C. Fear, R. Behlke, E. A. Lucek, and M. J. Engebretson, First simultaneous measurements of waves generated at the bow shock in the solar wind, the magnetosphere and on the ground, Ann. Geophys., 27, 357–371, 2009.

Clausen, L. B. N., T. K. Yeoman, R. Behlke, and E. A. Lucek, Multi-Instrument Observations of a Large Scale Pc4 Pulsation, Ann. Geophys., 26, 185–199, 2008.

Scoffield, H. C., T. K. Yeoman, D. M. Wright, S. E. Milan, A. N. Wright, and R. J. Strangeway, An investigation of the field aligned currents associated with a large scale ULF wave in the morning sector, Planet. Space Sci, 55 770–791, doi:10.1016/j.pss.2006.04.040, 2007.