COLLISIONLESS PLASMA MODELING IN AN ARBITRARY POTENTIAL-ENERGY DISTRIBUTION

A new technique for calculating a collisionless plasma along a field l ine is presented. The primary feature of this new ion-exospheric model is that it can handle an arbitrary (including nonmonotonic) potential energy distribution. This was one of the limiting constraints on the existing models in this class, and these constraints are generalized f or an arbitrary potential energy composition. The formulation for rela ting current density to the field-aligned potential as well as formula s for density, temperature, and energy flux calculations are presented for several distribution functions, ranging from a bi-lorentzian with a loss cone to an isotropic Maxwellian. A comparison of these results with previous models shows that the formulation reduces to the earlie r models under similar assumptions. (C) 1998 American Institute of Phy sics.