Collisionless Reconnection in Global Modeling of Magnetospheric Dynamics

Recent advances in small-scale kinetic modeling of magnetic reconnection significantly improved our understanding of physical mechanisms controlling the dissipation in the vicinity of the reconnection site in collisionless plasma. However the progress in studies of small-scale geometries was not very helpful for large scale simulations. Global magnetosphere simulations usually include non-ideal processes in terms of numerical dissipation and/or ad hoc anomalous resistivity. To understand the role of magnetic reconnection in global evolution of magnetosphere and to place spacecraft observations into global context it is desirable to perform global simulations with physically motivated model of dissipation that are capable to reproduce reconnection rates observed in kinetic models. In our efforts to bridge the gap between small scale kinetic modeling and global simulations we introduced an approach that allows to quantify the interaction between large-scale global magnetospheric dynamics and microphysical processes in diffusion regions near reconnection sites. We utilized the global MHD code BATSRUS and incorporate primary mechanism controlling the dissipation in the vicinity of the reconnection site in terms of non-gyrotropic corrections to the induction equation. We demonstrated that nongyrotropic effects can significantly alter the global magnetosphere evolution. Our approach allowed for the first time to model loading/unloading cycle in response to steady southward IMF driving. We will extend our approach to cases with nonzero IMF By and analyze the effects of solar wind parameters and ionospheric conductance on reconnection rate and global magnetosphere dynamics.