The proposed research program will study the substorm injection process by examining particle drifts in realistic magnetic fields. The study will develop a self-consistent picture of the evolution of the fields, currents, and pressures in the magnetosphere during a substorm. The Magnetosphere Specification Model will be modified to allow the boundary conditions to be varied in time so that conditions appropriate to the various states in a substorm can be simulated and compared with observations. The effects of current systems on the magnetic field structure will be incorporated self-consistently. Other refinements will also be added, including diffusion and losses due to wave-particle interactions, and the effect of particle precipitation on ionospheric conductivities.
