Fig. 3. Values of L mapped from the earth’s equatorial plane to a 100 km altitude (16). one half of the lower hybrid frequency even for heavy ions. Thus, the waves may have frequencies m ~ m Qi, m > 1. The characteristic wavelengths have kp„ > 1 where k is the wave vector and p„ is the gyroradius of the plasmasphere protons. For resonant wave particle interaction we require (14) where v is the radiation belt proton velocity, vh the radiation belt proton velocity component along the local magnetic field, is proton gyrofrequency and n is an integer, and since m ~ m there exists large enough m such that m = n and the resonance condition can be satisfied by the small doppler shifts and relativistic effects indicated. We thus would expect a resonant interaction between the Ar+ driven turbulence and the radiation belt protons. The magnitude of these interactions and effects require additional study to better estimate them. The precipitating protons will have energies up to —100 MeV and hence may be expected to have effects similar to those of solar flares. Although solar flare protons precipitate mainly at high latitudes while the Ar+ turbulence scattered energetic radiation belt protons precipitate at low to mid-latitudes, their effects on ionizing the atmosphere are much the same. This is the case since the recombination times which control the lifetime of the plasma created by the energetic proton precipitation has only a weak latitudinal dependence (A. Aikin, verbal communication). The resulting
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