Collisionless Phase Mixing Mimics Diffusive Transport in Radiation Belt Observations

Abstract

Since the dawn of the space age, observations of energetic particles in planetary radiation belts have been interpreted within a diffusive transport framework, even though the processes that populate and deplete these belts produce highly structured and spatially localized distributions. This exposes a fundamental problem: how can coherent phase-space structures evolving under collisionless dynamics give rise to observational signatures that appear consistent with diffusion-based transport? Here we show that diffusion-like behaviour can arise from an observational phase-mixing effect, independent of stochastic wave-particle transport. As spacecraft sample neighbouring drift shells while particles undergo electromagnetic drifts, spatially localized drift-phase structures are converted into rapidly decorrelating temporal signals, making them observationally indistinguishable from stochastic processes. We show that the effective lifetime of these structures is only a few drift periods, preventing the resolution of fine-scale structure. These results demonstrate that collisionless dynamics can mimic diffusive transport on short timescales, limiting the inference of particle acceleration processes and biasing transport estimates. This calls for a reassessment of diffusion-based interpretations of radiation belts at Earth, across the solar system, and in the radiation belts of ultra-cool brown dwarfs.