Monte Carlo study of secondary electrons and X-rays produced by different angular distributions of primary precipitating electrons interacting with the atmosphere Original Research Article

We present Monte Carlo simulations of the energy deposited by energetic electrons from the outer Van Allen belt precipitating into the atmosphere below 100 km. Consideration of the possible mechanism for the precipitation of outer belt electrons suggests that the electrons should be moving nearly horizontally when the enter the atmosphere; therefore we simulate and compare the precipitation of close to horizontally moving, vertically moving, and isotropically distributed electrons. We find that there should be a number of observable differences between the energy deposition for these different angular distributions of electrons.