资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

Whistler mode chorus waves are particularly important in outer radiation belt dynamics due to their key role in controlling the acceleration and scattering of electrons over a very wide energy range. The key parameters for both nonlinear and quasi-linear treatment of wave-particle interactions are the temporal and spatial scales of the wave source region and coherence of the wave field perturbations. Neither the source scale nor the coherence scale is well established experimentally, mostly because of a lack of multipoint VLF waveform measurements. We present an unprecedentedly long interval of coordinated VLF waveform measurements (sampled at 16384s(-1)) aboard the two Van Allen Probes spacecraft9h (0800-1200UT and 1700-2200UT) during two consecutive apogees on 15 July 2014. The spacecraft separations varied from about 100 to 5000km (mostly radially); measurements covered an L shell range from 3 to 6; magnetic local time 0430-0900, and magnetic latitudes were similar to 15 and similar to 5 degrees during the two orbits. Using time-domain correlation techniques, the single chorus source spatial extent transverse to the background magnetic field has been determined to be about 550-650km for upper band chorus waves with amplitudes less than 100pT and up to 800km for larger amplitude, lower band chorus waves. The ratio between wave amplitudes measured on the two spacecraft is also examined to reveal that the wave amplitude distribution within a single chorus element generation area can be well approximated by a Gaussian exp(-0.5r(2)/r(0)(2)), with the characteristic scale r(0) around 300km. Waves detected by the two spacecraft were found to be coherent in phase at distances up to 400km.