Comparison of polar cap electron density enhancement due to solar illumination and geomagnetic activity as measured by IMAGE/RPI

Polar cap electron density (Ne) measurements made between the years 2000 - 2005 by the radio plasma imager (RPI) on board the IMAGE spacecraft are used to study the density enhancements resulting from changes in solar illumination and geomagnetic activity level. This study covers a geocentric distance, R = 1.4 - 5.0 RE and the polar cap is defined by an empirical boundary model that takes into account the dynamic nature of the location and size of the polar cap. The average polar cap electron density profile depends on geomagnetic activity level e.g., measured by the Kp index and solar illumination (solar zenith angle) at the footprints of the geomagnetic field lines. Our analysis of RPI Ne data shows that increase in geomagnetic activity leads to an enhancement in Ne. This enhancement in Ne is found to increase with altitude. At geocentric distance of R = 4.5 RE, an increase in the geomagnetic activity level from Kp < 2 to ~5 results in an Ne increase by a factor of ~5. On the other hand, a strong solar illumination control of Ne at lower altitudes, and not at higher is observed. At geocentric distance of ~ 2 RE, the average Ne is larger on the sunlit side than on the dark side by a factor of 3 - 4 both for quiet and disturbed conditions. At geocentric distance of about 2.5 RE the effects of these two factors on Ne appear to be comparable. Similar to previous polar cap density models, a functional representation of RPI Ne that takes the form of a power law is proposed. While in the previous Ne functional representations the power index is a constant, the power index in our representation of Ne distribution is found to correlate with (and hence is a function of) the Kp index and the solar zenith angle (SZA).