An Investigation of Discontinuities in the Solar Terrestrial Environment

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This grant will support a theoretical study of tangential and rotational discontinuities in collisionless plasma by means of computer simulations. Such discontinuities are common and important structures in the solar terrestrial environment. A key example is the earth's magnetopause, the boundary between the terrestrial and solar magnetic fields. The simulations will be performed using one and two dimensional hybrid codes which incorporate ion kinetic effects such as viscosity. The simulation results will be used to obtain one and two dimensional models of the equilibrium structure of these discontinuities. The stability of the models, which will include the possibility of plasma velocity shear, will be examined. The results will have implications for plasma diffusion, heating, and acceleration at the magnetopause and discontinuities in the solar wind. Throughout this study in situ observations will be used to constrain the models. The importance of this work in S/T relations concerns the energy flow form the solar wind to the magnetosphere. the magnetopause transition is clearly important to this process which in effect powers much of the magnetosphere's activity e.g. substorms and aurora.