Global simulations of planetary magnetospheres

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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.