ИСТИНА

Auroral dynamics and acceleration of outer radiation belt electrons for a long time considered as weakly connected processes. At the same time, it was known, that development of magnetospheric substorms is a necessary condition for outer radiation belt filling. It was also well known, that large fluxes of relativistic electrons appear during magnetic storms when the auroral oval move to low latitudes and powerful ring current is developed leading to magnetic field distortions. The radial position of the outer radiation belt maximum formed after magnetic storm is determined by the maximal value of Dst variation during this storm. This position coincides with the maximum of the plasma pressure and with the position the maximal shift of the westward electrojet toward the equator. Such features is difficult to explain on the base of traditional substorm theories and dominant role of magnetotail processes in substorm development. However, the situation becomes clearer after the reanalysis of auroral oval mapping and topology of magnetospheric currents. It was shown that the main part of auroral oval is mapped not to the plasma sheet. It is mapped to the surrounding the Earth plasma ring at geocentric distance from ~6-7Re till 10-13Re where transverse magnetospheric currents are the high latitude continuation of the ordinary ring current. We summarize the arguments demonstrating the leading role of auroral processes in the outer radiation belt formation including first auroral arc brightening during storm time substorms, modification of magnetospheric plasma distribution by accelerated ionospheric ions and injections of substrom accelerated electrons in the region of depressed magnetic field. We discuss the possible role of local particle traps in the acceleration of outer belt electrons.