Monte Carlo modeling of ionospheric oxygen acceleration by cyclotron resonance with broad-band electromagnetic turbulence

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Abstract
We demonstrate that cyclotron resonance with observed electric field fluctuations is responsible for production of the oxygen-ion conics that are observed by the Dynamics Explorer 1 satellite in the central plasma-sheet region of the Earth’s magnetosphere. The ion-velocity distribution is described by a quasilinear diffusion equation which is solved by the Monte Carlo technique. The acceleration produced by the observed wave spectrum agrees well with the ion observations, in both form and magnitude. To our knowledge, this represents the first successful comparison of an observed conic with any theoretical model.