Electromagnetic Waves and their Effects in near-Earth Space

在太空时代之初，詹姆斯·范·艾伦有了一个惊人的发现：我们大气层上方的空间充满了高能辐射。那是在1958年，这一发现很快使他成为《时代》杂志的年度风云人物。自那时以来，许多事情都发生了变化，我们的社会已经开始依赖轨道卫星。GPS定位和卫星天气地图等应用程序是我们日常生活的一部分。然而，范·艾伦发现的辐射是一种自然现象，现代卫星经常穿过现在被称为范艾伦辐射带的两个甜甜圈形状的区域。这些区域的辐射来自电子和离子，它们被地球磁场俘获并加速到非常高的能量。这些粒子对经过它们的任何卫星构成严重威胁，主要是因为它们能够损坏和扰乱机载电子设备。*从20世纪90年代中期开始，越来越明显的是，我们对辐射带中的粒子如何达到如此高的能量，或者是什么过程导致它们偶尔被释放到我们的大气层或深空中的了解有限。较老的物理模型根本无法解释它们的动态和难以预测的性质。目前，国际社会正集中力量纠正这一问题，全面了解辐射带，NASA最近发起了一项专门的任务，加拿大等几个国家也开展了密切相关的项目。*这项提议要求资金研究一种被称为“哨声模式”的电磁波在加速辐射带粒子和将其从辐射带释放出来的作用。它利用加拿大和国际资源的独特组合，包括空间和地面资源，以最大限度地提高加拿大从即将到来的密集辐射带调查期间的科学回报。

At the start of the space age, James Van Allen made a startling discovery: the space above our atmosphere is filled with high-energy radiation. That was in 1958, and the discovery soon made him Time Magazine's "Man of the Year". Much has changed since that time, and our society has come to rely on orbiting satellites. Applications such as GPS positioning and satellite weather maps are a part of our daily lives. However, the radiation that Van Allen discovered is a natural phenomenon, and modern satellites often cross through the two doughnut-shaped regions now known as the Van Allen radiation belts. The radiation in these regions comes from electrons and ions which are trapped by the Earth's magnetic field and accelerated to very high energies. These particles pose a serious threat to any satellites passing through them, mostly due to their ability to damage and disrupt on-board electronics.****Starting from the mid-1990s, it became increasingly apparent that we have only a limited understanding of how the particles in the radiation belts reach such high energies, or what processes cause them to be occasionally released into our atmosphere or into deep space. Older physical models simply could not explain their dynamic and hard-to-predict nature. There is presently a focussed international effort to remedy this and to fully understand the radiation belts, with a dedicated mission recently launched by NASA and closely related projects from several nations including Canada.** **This proposal requests funds to examine the role of a class of electromagnetic waves known as "whistler-mode" waves in both accelerating radiation belt particles and releasing them from the belts. It uses a unique combination of Canadian and international resources, both space- and ground-based, in order to maximize the Canadian scientific return from the upcoming intense period of radiation belt investigation.