Production of negative hydrogen ions within MMS Fast Plasma Investigation due to solar wind bombardment
File(s)
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The particle data delivered by Fast Plasma Investigation (FPI) instrument aboard NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission allows for exceptionally high-resolution examination of the electron and ion phase space in the near-Earth plasma environment. It is necessary to identify populations which originate from instrumental effects. Using FPI's Dual Electron Spectrometers (DES) we isolate a high energy (~keV) beam, present while the spacecraft are in the solar wind, which exhibits an azimuthal drift with period associated with the spacecraft spin. We show that this population is consistent with negative hydrogen ions H- generated by a double charge exchange interaction between the incident solar wind H+ ions and the metallic surfaces within the instrument. This interaction is likely to occur at the deflector plates close to the instrument aperture. The H- density is shown to be approximately 0.2-0.4% of the solar wind ion density, and the energy of the negative ion population is shown to be 70% of the incident solar wind energy. These negative ions may introduce errors in electron velocity moments on the order of 0.2-0.4% of the solar wind velocity, and significantly higher errors in the electron temperature.
Date Issued
2018-08
Date Acceptance
2018-07-09
Citation
Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 2018, 123 (8), pp.6161-6170
ISSN
2169-9380
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
Start Page
6161
End Page
6170
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics
Volume
123
Issue
8
Copyright Statement
©2018. The Authors.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Sponsor
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Identifier
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018JA025341
Grant Number
ST/N000692/1
Subjects
Science & Technology
Physical Sciences
Astronomy & Astrophysics
negative ions
solar wind
charge exchange
instruments
MMS
MAGNETOSPHERIC MULTISCALE
PERFORMANCE
Publication Status
Published online
Date Publish Online
2018-07-17