Kinetic Simulations of Magnetopause Including Ionospheric Effect

该研究项目将利用动力学粒子代码来分析地球磁层顶等离子体传输的过程。全粒子模拟将用于研究无碰撞重连接的基本过程。然后将进行混合粒子/流体模拟，以确定磁层顶重联的大尺度后果。在这些模拟中特别有趣的是，它们将使用多种离子，这可能导致开尔文-亥姆霍兹波的激发和突发重连。突发重联导致了通量传递事件的形成，这在卫星数据中已经观察到很多次，但尚未得到令人满意的解释。

This research program will utilize a kinetic particle code to analyze the processes involved with plasma transport at the Earth's magnetopause. Full particle simulations will be used to study the fundamental processes involved in collisionless reconnection. Hybrid particle/fluid simulations will then be performed to determine the large scale consequences of magnetopause reconnection. Of particular interest in these simulations is the fact that they will use multiple ion species, which can lead to the excitation of Kelvin-Helmholz waves and bursty reconnection. Bursty reconnection results in the formation of Flux Transfer Events, which have been observed many times in satellite data, but have yet to be satisfactorily explained.