Outflow off the Beaten Path: Low Energy (< keV) O+ Outflow Directly Into the Inner Magnetosphere as Observed by the Van Allen Probes and the Implications for Mid- and Low-Latitude Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupling

The low-energy (eV to hundreds of eV) ion population in the inner magnetosphere, the warm plasma cloak, and in particular its heavy ion component, the O+ torus, is crucial to magnetospheric dynamics. Yet, although the effects of high latitude and cusp ionospheric O+ outflow and its subsequent transport and acceleration within the magnetotail and plasma sheet have been extensively studied, the source of low-energy O+ within the inner magnetosphere (already observed by the DE1 spacecraft in the 80s) remains a compelling open question. The HOPE instrument aboard each of the Van Allen Probes, moving in highly elliptical, equatorial orbits with apogee of 5.8 RE, has repeatedly detected low-energy O+ field-aligned enhancements. We present a comprehensive study of one such event, where low energy O+ field-aligned intensity enhancements were observed, both at small and large pitch angles, during a geomagnetic storm. The energy spectrogram exhibited a dispersive signature and a banded structure, features that our simple particle tracing simulation demonstrated are due to O+ ions outflowing from both hemispheres of the night-side ionosphere directly into the magnetosphere within L = 4, and subsequently bouncing from one hemisphere to the other. These outflows are associated with field-aligned Poynting flux enhancements and field-aligned electron beams, as observed at the Van Allen Probes location, revealing energy transport from the magnetosphere to ionosphere as well as simultaneous field-aligned electron heating. We also incorporate ionospheric measurements, such as field-aligned currents, as those are inferred by AMPERE data. The combination of unprecedented simultaneous magnetospheric and ionospheric observations allow us to investigate the processes that lead to an O+ outflow event from the low-latitude, night-side ionosphere directly into the inner magnetosphere. The ubiquity of such events in the Van Allen Probes data might reveal one of the sources for the O+ torus.