CAREER: Understanding the Role of Inductive Electric Fields in Particle Energization

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The space environment surrounding Earth is filled with plasma flowing among magnetic and electric fields. Particles in this plasma interact with these fields, gaining energy that affects their motion and interactions throughout this region of space, known as the magnetosphere. The understanding of plasmas embedded in magnetic fields, the goal of this project, has many scientific, industrial, national security, and medical applications - including direct relevance to space weather modeling and forecasting. The project will support research for an early career female researcher, graduate student, post-doctoral researcher, and four undergraduate students each year. Additionally, 3D visualizations of abstract electricity and magnetism concepts will be made in Virtual Reality - an immersive, exploratory, and engaging environment. The visualizations will be used for physics curricula aimed towards undergraduate engineering, science, mathematics, and medical students and high school students. The primary objective of this project is to fill the gap in our understanding of particle accelerations in the terrestrial magnetosphere and determine how the nature and structure of the electric field contributes to energization and particle transport in this region. Specifically, the goal is to understand how particle injections are formed and driven by different sources of electric field (potential vs. inductive) and where they originate from. To do this, the work includes (1) determining the role of inductive electric fields to ring current particle energization leading to understanding of the injection driver mechanism; (2) determining and quantifying the role of inductive electric fields due to intensification of the magnetopause current vs inductive electric fields due to magnetic field dipolarizations to ring current development and decay; and (3) determining the role of inductive electric fields in predicting geomagnetic activity. This involves detailed numerical computer simulations and data-model comparisons with in-situ measurements from NASA's Magnetosphere Multiscale (MMS) and Van Allen Probes missions.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.