Spatial distributions of ions and electrons from the plasma sheet to the inner magnetosphere: Comparisons between THEMIS‐Geotail statistical results and the Rice convection model

To understand the processes responsible for the formation and structure of plasma sheet and ring current particles, we have used THEMIS and Geotail data to investigate statistically the distributions of ions and electrons from the midtail to the inner magnetosphere and compared them with results from the Rice convection model (RCM). The observed distributions show clear magnetic local time (MLT) asymmetries in the thermal energy and energy fluxes of plasma sheet particles but many more MLT symmetric ring current particles. Our RCM runs include both self‐consistent electric and magnetic fields and realistic MLT‐dependent outer particle sources. Starting with no initial particles, particles released from the RCM outer sources move along electric and magnetic drift paths and change energy adiabatically. Comparison of the observation with the simulation indicates that the particles along the open drift paths can account for the observed plasma sheet populations and that the observed significant MLT variations are a combined result of species‐ and energy‐dependent drift and location‐dependent source strength. The simulated energy and spatial distributions of the particles within closed drift paths are found to be consistent with the observed ring current particles. These ring current particles are originally plasma sheet particles which became trapped along closed paths due to temporal variations of drift paths. The good agreement in key features of the spatial distributions of thermal energy and energy fluxes between the RCM and observations clearly indicates that electric and magnetic drift transport and the associated energization play dominant roles in plasma sheet and ring current dynamics.