Building a Coupled Kinetic Framework for the Magnetosphere-Ionosphere-Plasmasphere-Polar Wind-Superthermal Electron System

Recent spacecraft observations have revealed that the critical plasma processes regulating mass and energy transfer in the magnetosphere take place at relatively thin ion-scale regions (e.g., bow shock, magnetopause, magnetotail) where kinetic ions control the physics. All parts of the magnetosphere are strongly coupled: the ionosphere's finite conductivity affects the field line tying as well as the size of the magnetosphere; multi-species ionospheric outflows limit the cross-polar cap potential, provide a sink for the energy flowing into the auroral region, modify the open/closed boundary during storms and substorms and determine the distribution of energetic particles in the ring current and plasma sheet. We propose to develop the next generation global modeling framework which will, for the first time, retain full ion kinetic effects throughout the entire magnetosphere. This will be achieved through coupling independent hybrid models for two separate parts of the magnetosphere: (i) the outer magnetosphere, modeled with a new asynchronous (event-driven) global hybrid code, HYPERS, and (ii) the ionosphere-plasmasphere-polar-wind (IPPW) system, modeled with a different hybrid code coupled with a new superthermal electron (SE) transport model. Thus, in our asynchronous framework the HYPERS code will provide self-consistent electric field and ion flows (sinks) to the IPPW-SE model which will self-consistently compute ionospheric kinetic ion flows (sources) and conductivity to enable seamless continuation of the kinetic-ion physics towards the outer magnetosphere.