Evan Tyler
College of Saint Scholastica, MN·Physics
Earth is surrounded by radiation belts, regions of energetic charged particles held in place by its magnetic field. Two kinds of naturally occurring waves in this space plasma, called chorus and hiss, help shape the belts.
- Fields
Physics
Earth & Environmental Science
Astronomy & Astrophysics
- Topics
space physics
geospace
magnetosphere
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Determine the properties of whistler-mode chorus and hiss waves in plasmasphere–plasmatrough transition regions, where the plasmapause density drop is gradual and spans up to several L-shells.
- Construct full statistical models of hiss and chorus waves separately for 'hard' (sharp) and 'soft' (gradual) plasmapause cases, including intervals usually excluded from wave databases.
- Establish how including soft-plasmapause transition regions, where chorus and hiss can overlap, changes radiation belt simulations of particle acceleration and scattering.
More about the research
They can accelerate particles to near light speed, where the particles can harm humans and hardware in space. They can also knock particles down into the atmosphere, where they may pose risks to aircraft and passengers on polar routes. Models often assume the two wave types are cleanly separated by the plasmapause, a sharp drop in plasma density, with hiss on one side and chorus on the other. But about half the time this boundary is a broad, gradual transition region instead, where chorus and hiss can overlap and act on particles together.
Why it matters
More complete wave models could improve predictions of where radiation belt particles are accelerated or scattered. Those predictions matter for protecting people and hardware in space and aircraft on polar routes. By including the roughly half of cases with a 'soft' plasmapause, the work aims to remove a bias in current radiation belt models toward stronger wave–particle interactions.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Xinlin Li
University of Colorado Boulder, CO·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Analyze more than 12 solar energetic particle events seen by the REPTile-2 CubeSat detector, combined with NOAA/POES, MetOp and ground riometer data, to measure how storms shift the latitudes where particles reach the polar atmosphere.
Adam Michael
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Physics
Analyze a large database of interplanetary shocks observed simultaneously by multiple spacecraft to establish how different regions of the magnetosphere, Earth's protective magnetic bubble, respond to shocks with differing properties.
Kun Zhang
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Daytona Beach, FL·Earth & Environmental Science
Measure how the reflection rate, velocity, temperatures and velocity distribution types of freshly reflected ions at Earth's bow shock depend on solar wind speed, interplanetary magnetic field, Mach number, beta and shock angle, using satellite measurements.
The school
College of Saint Scholastica: 1 labs on PI Pages.
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