A SELF CONSISTENT RING CURRENT IN EARTHS DIPOLE FIELD

A self consistent, time independent, ring current of a charged particle distribution under the influence of the combined field of the Earth's dipole and the field due to the currents of the particle motions is constructed. The method of solution consists of successive iterations of the magnetic field of the currents due to the particle motions in the combined field until this field converges to its limit. The results are compared with computations of similar particle distributions moving in the Earth's dipole field alone and conclusions are drawn regarding the accuracy of computations that ignore the self effect of the ring current. © 1969.