Hydrogen and helium isotope inner radiation belts in the Earth's magnetosphere

Abstract

Radial transport theory for inner radiation zone MeV ions has been extended by combining radial diffusive transport and losses due to Coulomb friction with local generation of D, T and 3He ions from nuclear reactions taking place on the inner edge of the inner radiation zone. Based on interactions between high energy trapped protons and upper atmospheric constituents we have included a nuclear reaction yield D, T and 3He flux source that was numerically derived from a nuclear reaction model code originally developed at the Institute of Nuclear Researches in Moscow, Russia. Magnetospheric transport computations have been made covering the L-shell range L = 1.0-1.6. The resulting MeV energy D, T and 3He ion flux distributions show a strong influence of the local nuclear source mechanism on the inner zone energetic D, T and 3He ion content.