FUV remote sensing of the isotropic boundary and magnetotail stretching

Several studies attempted to identify the Isotropic Boundary (IB) defining the limit between the adiabatic and non-adiabatic trajectories of the trapped protons along closed magnetic field lines. This boundary is an indicator of the amount of magnetic field lines' stretching in the magnetotail. These studies are based on in situ measurements, resulting in spatially and temporally restricted samples. To avoid this limitation, we propose to use global data obtained with the FUV-SI12 proton imager on board IMAGE spacecraft. We determine at each magnetic local time the position of an optical boundary equivalent to IB and thereby the stretching of the magnetic field lines. We show that the correspondence between the latitude of the maximum proton precipitation observed by SI12 and the IB measured by DMSP satellites is statistically established and depends on the magnetic local time. The relation between the position of the maximum proton precipitation as well as the intensity of this maximum and the magnetic field's distortion is determined by comparison with GOES-8 data. We thus suggest that SI12 can be used as a tool for the global determination of the isotropic boundary and to monitor the amount of stretching in the magnetotail.