Temporal Signatures of Electron Precipitation Induced by Magnetospherically Reflected Whistlers

Recent measurements of electron precipitation into the drift loss-cone made by the SAMPEX satellite have shown that lightning generated, magnetospherically reflecting whistler waves can play a significant role in electron precipitation from the radiation belts. Following on from previous work that has only considered the first hop of the whistler wave, or taken into account magnetospheric reflections in a crude way, we use an extensive raytracing and interpolation algorithm, and calculate the detailed frequency-time signatures of a magnetospherically-reflecting whistler wave caused by a single cloud-ground lightning stroke, at all latitude points along a certain L-shell. Using this wave energy distribution, we calculate the flux of precipitating, energetic electrons from the radiation belts, along the specific L-shell under consideration (we use L=3 for illustration), due to wave-particle interactions at every point along the field line.