A New Model for the Response of the Plasmasphere to Time- and Spatially-Varying Magnetospheric Convection Electric Fields

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We propose to model the temporal evolution of the large-scale density structures of the plasmasphere as they are created and controlled by the dynamics of refilling and convection. These structures are a prominent features appearing in measurements of the plasmasphere and will be theoretically examined with a two- dimensional plasmaspheric model ıRasmussen et al., 1990! patterned after Chen and Wolf ı1972!. Our approach will be to parametrically study plasmaspheric features created by a variety of temporally- and spatially-varying electric fields and to compare these features with recent measurements of the plasmasphere. Areas of specific interest are the two-dimensional structure of regions of relatively dense plasma, which appear to be detached from the main body of the plasmasphere when seen from the perspective of an orbiting satellite, as well as the creation of various characteristic plasmaspheric density profiles ısee Horwitz et al., 1990!. This modeling study is, in part, motivated by new observations of structures in the plasmasphere ıe.g., Carpenter et al., 1990; Horwitz et al., 1990; Anderson et al., 1990!.