Butterfly Pitch Angle Distributions Generated at Low L Values During March 2015 Storm: Van Allen Probe ECT Observations

The 17 March 2015 magnetic storm was the largest storm (DST<-220 nT) in the Van Allen Probes era so far. Near the end of the main phase and during the early recovery phase of this storm the ECT MagEIS and REPT sensors observed electrons with "butterfly" type pitch angle distributions with relative minima at 90° equatorial pitch angles. The "butterfly" distributions were observed at energies that spanned the range from 32 keV to ~5 MeV. These pitch angle distributions occurred over an energy- dependent range of L-shells from L~1.5 in the inner zone out to L~3 in the slot region. In general, they occurred at the deepest L penetration point for the individual energies. We will present these observations and discuss their relationship to earlier observations and recently published simulation results.