American Geophysical Union, Journal of Geophysical Research, A5(104), p. 10295-10306, 1999
DOI: 10.1029/1999ja900104
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A new time-dependent kinetic model is used to investigate the effects of self-consistency and hot plasma influences on plasmaspheric refilling. The model employs a direct solution of the kinetic equation with a Fokker-Planck Coulomb collision operator to obtain the phase space distribution function of the thermal protons along a field line. Of particular interest is the influence of several processes on the source cone distribution function formation. It is found that a self-consistent ion temperature in the collision term can increase or decrease the equatorial plane density, depending not only on the choice of ion temperature in the static-background calculations but also on the form of the nonlinear representation. The inclusion of a self-consistent polarization electric field increases the early stage equatorial plane density by a factor of 2. Investigations of the effects of anisotropic hot plasma populations on the refilling rates shows that, after a slight initial decrease in equatorial density from clearing out the initial distribution, there is a 10 to 30% increase after 4 hours due to these populations. This increase is due primarily to a slowing of the refilling streams near the equator from the reversed electric field.