Storms and Substorms from Kinetic Plasma Theory Modeling

该项目使用等离子体物理学和非线性理论来模拟地球磁层中太阳风驱动的风暴和亚风暴。该项目有三个基本部分：(1)对太阳风向地球环电流和电离层的非线性传输进行建模；(2)对通过地尾等离子体传播的电磁脉冲进行理论和计算建模，地尾等离子体连接亚风暴活动起源的两个地点；(3)利用向地球传播的电磁等离子体脉冲作为向内磁层注入高能电子的源。该项目涉及高速等离子体流和加速等离子体通量管产生的各向异性离子分布的动力学稳定性分析，以验证Pi2脉冲爆发的来源来自风暴和亚风暴动力学的这些特征的假设。局部快速电子尺度磁重联模型将用于亚暴模拟。基础模型使用ACE航天器数据实时运行，每年将向实时模型中添加该项目的新功能。正在开发的物理实时模型将为解释来自THEMIS和MMS科学任务的新数据提供一个重要工具，这两个任务都是为了研究亚暴难题而设计的。亚暴是地球磁尾中磁能爆炸释放的基本方法。同样的过程也发生在太阳的日冕物质抛射中，也可能发生在等离子体风吹过的磁化恒星上。类似的过程也发生在托卡马克实验室等离子体的核心。本研究对大学预科生和大学生都具有显著的科学教育成分。该项目还将支持研究生进行的研究。

This project uses plasma physics and nonlinear theory to model the solar wind-driven storms and substorms in the Earth's magnetosphere. The project has three basic parts: (1) modeling of the nonlinear transfer of solar wind power to the Earth's ring current and ionosphere, (2) a theoretical and computational effort to model the electromagnetic pulses that propagate through the geotail plasma, which connect the two sites where substorm activity originates, and (3) using the Earthward propagating electromagnetic-plasma pulse as the source for injecting high energy electrons into the inner magnetosphere. The project involves kinetic stability analysis of anisotropic ion distributions created by high-speed plasma streams and accelerated plasma flux tubes to test the hypothesis that the source of Pi2 pulsation bursts are from these features of the storm and substorm dynamics. Local models of fast, electron-scale magnetic reconnection will be used in the substorm modeling. The base model runs in real-time using ACE spacecraft data and new features of this project will be added to the real-time model each year. The physics real-time model being developed will provide an important tool for interpreting the new data expected from the science missions THEMIS and MMS, which are both designed to examine the substorm conundrum. The substorm is the basic method by which magnetic energy in Earth's magnetotail is explosively released. The same type of process takes place in coronal mass ejections on the Sun and presumably on plasma-wind-blown magnetized stars. Similar processes occur in the core of laboratory plasmas in tokamaks. The research has a significant science educational component for both pre-college students and college students. The project will also support research to be done by graduate students.