Citation: | Jiao, L. H., Ma, X., Zhang, Y. N., Jin, T. F., Fu, S., and Ni, B. B. (2024). A statistical analysis of the Kappa-type energy spectrum distribution of radiation belt electrons observed by Van Allen Probes. Earth Planet. Phys., 8(2), 368–375. doi: 10.26464/epp2024001 |
The energy spectrum of energetic electrons is a key factor representing the dynamic variations of Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts. Increased measurements have indicated that the commonly used Maxwellian and Kappa distributions are inadequate for capturing the realistic spectral distributions of radiation belt electrons. Here we adopt the Kappa-type (KT) distribution as the fitting function and perform a statistical analysis to investigate the radiation belt electron flux spectra observed by the Van Allen Probes. By calculating the optimal values of the key KT distribution parameters (i.e.,