and to the heating of the ambient plasma by the thermalization of the argon ions. Chiu et al. (1979b) found that the observed plasmaspheric density included in the region between an altitude of 500 km and the dipole field line L=5 can be adequately described by the expression [[spi:math]] [[spi:math]] (49) where nj is the density of ion species j, s is the distance along the dipole field line measured from the equator (s=0) to the ionosphere (s=[[spi:math]]), B is the magnetic field strength, q |e| is the charge, E is the ambipolar diffusion electric field strength, m is the ion mass, G is the gravitational constant, ME is the mass of the earth, [[spi:math]] is the angular rotation frequency of the earth, k is Boltzmann’s constant, and r is the geocentric radial coordinate. The empirically determined temperature profile along a field line is given by [[spi:math]] (50) where T0 , T1, L0 [[spi:math]] and [[spi:math]] are constants with the following nominal values: [[spi:math]]. These authors considered a charge-neutral four constituent model composed of electrons, H+, O+ and He+. Their result in the equatorial plane and the above natural temperature parameters is shown in the left panel of Figure 15. For the purpose of the present investigation, the minor constituent He+ was omitted and argon ions were substituted as the fourth plasmasphere con45
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