Global Storm-Time Depletion of the Outer Electron Belt

The outer radiation belt consists of relativistic (≳0.5 MeV) electrons trapped on closed trajectories around Earth where its magnetic field is nearly dipolar. During increased geomagnetic activity electron intensities in the belt can vary by orders of magnitude at different spatial and temporal scale. The main phase of geomagnetic storms often produces deep depletions of electron intensities over broad regions of the outer belt. Previous studies identified three possible processes that can contribute to the depletions: fully adiabatic inflation of electron drift orbits caused the ring current growth, electron loss into the atmosphere due to pitch-angle scattering by plasma waves (e.g., EMIC and whistler waves), and electron escape through the magnetopause boundary. In this paper we investigate the relative importance of the magnetopause losses to the rapid depletion of the outer belt observed at the Van Allen Probes spacecraft during the main phase of March 17, 2013 storm. The intensities of > 1 MeV electrons were depleted by more that an order of magnitude over the entire radial extent of the belt in less than 6 hours after the sudden storm commencement. For the analysis we used three-dimensional test-particle simulations of global evolution of the outer belt in the Tsyganenko-Sitnov (TS07D) magnetic field model with the inductive electric field. The comparison of the simulation results with electron measurements from the MagEIS experiment shows that the magnetopause losses in the model accounts for most of the observed depletion. The individual electron motion the process is non-adiabatic; the third invariant is violated by global variations of the inner magnetospheric fields caused by the magnetopause compressions and the buildup of ring current, while the second invariant is violated at drift orbit bifurcations. The analysis shows that the observed deep depletion of radiation belt intensities is enabled by the change in the global configuration of magnetic field due to storm-time development of the ring current; a simulation of electron evolution without a ring current produces a much weaker depletion.