Investigation of Particle Trajectories in the Near-Earth Night-Side Magnetosphere Using Riometers

Abstract

Injections of electrons into the inner magnetosphere play an important role in radiation belt and ring current dynamics. Injections have historically been studied primarily by data from particle detectors on satellites, causing gaps in our knowledge because these events are spatially large and highly structured and satellites provide only point measurements. It has been shown that injections can be identified in ground-based riometer data, making the large number of existing riometers (particularly in Canada) a valuable resource. It is likely that riometers will be an important compliment to satellites in further studies of injections. My thesis research was motivated by this possibility. The goal of this project is to demonstrate that multi-point riometer observations can be used to infer the energy of injected electron populations.