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Satellite sweeping of electrons at Neptune and Uranus
Author(s) -
Cooper John F.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/gl017i010p01665
Subject(s) - uranus , neptune , physics , electron , dipole , computational physics , offset (computer science) , satellite , astronomy , planet , nuclear physics , quantum mechanics , computer science , programming language
Knowledge of satellite sweeping parameters at Neptune and Uranus, and of their functional dependences on particle energy and pitch angle, can be critical in the proper identification of parent absorbers for observed absorption signatures in regions where OTD (Offset, Tilted Dipole) models are valid representations of the measured magnetic fields. In this paper, we calculate critical electron energies for longitudinal drift resonance, snowplow (i.e., strong) absorption, leapfrog, and corkscrew effects, using a reduced version of OTD that neglects nonaxial dipole offsets. Earlier analytic work on sweeping rates is extended to give the radial dependence of these rates the minimum‐L region and to set limits on diffusion of electrons with the simplifying approximation that leapfrog effects are ignored.