Radial diffusion of radiation belt particles in nondipolar magnetic fields

The fact that charged particles trapped in Earth's magnetic field can be redistributed along their radial distance from Earth due to drift‐resonant interactions with small‐amplitude waves has been known since early in the space age. Early theoretical efforts assumed that a dipole background magnetic field was modified by a time‐varying electromagnetic perturbation that changed the particle's distance from Earth while preserving the first two invariants of motion. The stochastic nature of the perturbation allowed the effect of the waves on the trapped particles to be represented by a Fokker‐Planck equation, which updates the phase space density in time via radial diffusion with diffusion coefficients that depend on the wave characteristics. In this paper, we extend those early theoretical efforts to define radial diffusion coefficients in arbitrary static background fields and define a numerical scheme for their evaluation. The background fields we consider are allowed to have significant deviations from a dipole field. Radial diffusion coefficients are computed using the new scheme for one of the empirical magnetic field models (T89) developed by Tsyganenko and coauthors as the background on top of which the perturbations are added. The new diffusion coefficients are shown to be substantially larger than those computed with a dipole background field model, especially at large radial distances and during geomagnetically active times, and it is suggested that outward radial diffusion may be a more substantial loss process for trapped electrons in the outer radiation belt than previously believed.