Mercury-Solar Wind Interaction in Quasineutral Hybrid Model
Abstract
The Hermean magnetosphere is anticipated to have certain unique features as compared with other planetary magnetospheres. The planet's intrinsic magnetic field is strong enough to form a magnetosphere around the planet. However, it is not clear how the processes in the Hermean magnetosphere resemble the processes that take place in other magnetospheres. Especially the questions: How effectively the magnetosphere can shield the planet against the solar wind particles, how effectively the magnetosphere can store energy in the magnetotail, and how the direct interaction between the magnetosphere and the planet's surface, which can take place because of the very tenuous atmosphere, are still open. We have developed a 3-D quasi-neutral hybrid model to study the Hermean magnetosphere. The recently developed self-consistent hybrid model, which has been used earlier to study the Mars-solar wind interaction [Kallio and Janhunen, JGR, 5617-5634, 2001], includes ions which are moved by the Lorentz force, while electrons form a massless charge neutralizing fluid. The model includes solar wind protons and planetary ions, say, Na+, or K+ ions. Planetary ions are produced by two sources, photoionization from a neutral corona model, and sputtering ions from the surface. A fully 3-D neutral corona density model, and fully 2-D (latitude and longitude on the surface) surface ion emission model can be used. The hybrid approach makes it possible to study several plasma physical processes in the vicinity of the planet that are difficult or impossible to model easily by other self consistent approaches, such as effects associated with ions' finite gyroradius, the velocity difference between different ion species, the large loss cone, or the non-maxwellian velocity distribution function. Especially, the model can be used to study magnetosphere-planetary surface interaction because ions can precipitate on the surface. In the presentation we will show some preliminary results of our hybrid model runs.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2001
- Bibcode:
- 2001AGUFM.P12D0520K
- Keywords:
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- 2740 Magnetospheric configuration and dynamics;
- 2753 Numerical modeling;
- 2756 Planetary magnetospheres (5443;
- 5737;
- 6030);
- 2784 Solar wind/magnetosphere interactions;
- 5443 Magnetospheres (2756)