Global simulations of planetary magnetospheres

大规模全球模拟是研究行星磁层如何形成和演化的物理学的有力工具。虽然许多努力都是针对建模和理解地球的磁层，计算机模拟也被用来模拟所有磁化行星-水星，木星，土星，天王星和海王星。关于太阳风-磁层相互作用的一个关键问题是磁重联在使等离子体在整个磁层循环中的作用。在地球上，人们普遍认为重联是最重要的，但不对称的边界条件，流动剪切，磁场方向和三维几何形状都控制着它的发生，位置和效率。因此，磁重联在磁层动力学中的作用一般来说仍然没有完全理解。这个博士项目的目标是使用帝国理工学院的高性能计算（HPC）系统和帝国理工学院等离子体物理组开发的计算机代码来模拟全球太阳风-磁层相互作用，以更好地了解何时何地磁重联可能发生在行星磁层的边界上，首先是在地球上，但也可以应用于太阳系的其他行星以及系外行星的磁层。

Large-scale global simulations are a powerful tool for studying the physics of how planetary magnetospheres form and evolve. Whilst much effort has been directed at modelling and understanding the Earth's magnetosphere, computer simulations have also been used to model all the magnetized planets - Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. A key question pertaining to the solar wind - magnetosphere interaction is the role of magnetic reconnection in enabling plasma to circulate throughout the magnetosphere. At Earth, it is commonly understood that reconnection is of primary importance, but asymmetric boundary conditions, flow shear, magnetic field orientations, and the 3d geometry all control its occurrence, location, and efficiency. Therefore the role of magnetic reconnection in magnetospheric dynamics in general is still not completely understood. The goal of this PhD project is to use Imperial College's High Performance Computing (HPC) system and computer codes developed in the Imperial College plasma physics group to perform simulations of the global solar wind-magnetosphere interaction, to better understand when and where magnetic reconnection may occur on the boundaries of planetary magnetospheres, firstly at Earth, but with applications to other planets in the solar system and also exoplanet magnetospheres.