On the use of Artificially Injected Energetic Electrons as Indicators of Magnetospheric Electric Fields Parallel to the Magnetic Lines of Force

Abstract

The observation of magnetospheric electric fields parallel to the magnetic field direction could conveniently be performed by measuring their effects on the propagation of artificially injected energetic charged particles. Unfortunately, the experimental difficulties are tremendous. Nevertheless, initial results in this context have been obtained and have been presented by Haerendel et al. (1976) for ions and Wilhelm et al. (1980) and Wilhelm (1980) for electrons. With a view to formulating an adequate procedure for interpreting these and future measurements, an inversion procedure will be devised that would allow the computation of the electric field distribution as a function of height from the particle transit time measured as a function of pitch angle.