Effects of superthermal ring current ion tails on the electromagnetic ion cyclotron instability in multi-ion magnetospheric plasmas

An important plasma source for the storm-enhanced ring current is the plasma sheet. Ion species in the near-Earth plasma sheet have been observed to have power law tails on their velocity distributions, which can be well fitted with kappa distributions under a variety of geomagnetic conditions. Motivated by these ideas, we investigate the electromagnetic ion cyclotron (EMIC) instability driven by hot ring current ions having velocity distributions that exhibit thermal anisotropy and power law tails of varying degrees of hardness (smallness of power index) for parameters consistent with the inner magnetosphere. With few exceptions, the presence of hard power law tails on the velocity distributions of the ring current ion species is observed to significantly enhance instability growth rates relative to a bi-Maxwellian ring current model. For a ring current composed of only hot protons, all EMIC branches are unstable, with the helium branch exhibiting the fastest growth rate for the thermal anisotropies considered. The addition of equal number densities of helium and oxygen ions to the ring current plasma has a dramatic stabilizing effect on the proton and helium branches. In this case it is frequently only the oxygen branch of the EMIC wave dispersion relation which is unstable. The detailed balance between cyclotron damping produced by one species and growth produced by another elevates the importance of the velocity distribution spectral index so that it can serve as a switch to turn on instability of certain branches.