calculating partial moments of an ion distribution function from FPI using the mms_part_slice2d

[jameswilburlewis]

From Gankai Poh, poh@cua.edu:

I have an ion distribution that contains the solar wind, beam and diffuse population. I would like to only calculate the partial moment for the diffuse and beam population separately. After removing the solar wind, I tried using the "thetarange" keyword of the function but it doesn't seem to be working. This is my code:

mms_part_slice2d, trange=['2017-12-07/08:01:31.5', '2017-12-07/08:01:32'],instrument='fpi',species='i',probe='1',data_rate='brst', $
                  rotation='b_exb',zrange=[1e-30,1e-22],three_d_interp = 1,/subtract_bulk,plotbfield=1,$
                  mag_data='mms1_fgm_b_gse_brst_l2_bvec',/remove_fpi_sw, levels = 250, olines=20;,thetarange=[-20,-90]

Any advice or help will be greatly appreciated.

[jameswilburlewis]

Thanks for letting us know! It seems that mms_part_slice2d doesn't pass the thetarange parameter to the lower level processing routines. (However, the documentation states that thetarange is only valid for 2-d interpolation, and you seem to be specifying 3-d.)

I'll try adding thetarange to the internal spd_slice2d call and see what happens with the 2-d and 3-d interpolation methods.