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Embedding particle-in-cell simulations in global magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the magnetosphere

Part of: Focus on Space Plasmas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 February 2019

Raymond J. Walker Open the ORCID record for Raymond J. Walker [Opens in a new window] ,
Giovanni Lapenta ,
Jean Berchem ,
Mostafa El-Alaoui  and
David Schriver
Raymond J. Walker*
Affiliation:
Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1567, USA
Giovanni Lapenta
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200B, 3001 Leuven, Belgium Space Science Institute, 4750 Walnut St, Suite 205, Boulder, CO 80301, USA
Jean Berchem
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
Mostafa El-Alaoui
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
David Schriver
Affiliation:
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: [email protected]
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Abstract

We have combined global magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of the solar wind and magnetosphere interaction with an implicit particle-in-cell simulation (PIC) and used this approach to model magnetic reconnection at both the dayside magnetopause and in the magnetotail plasma sheet. In this approach, we first model the magnetospheric configuration driven by the solar wind using the MHD simulation. At a time of interest (usually when a thin current sheet has formed in the MHD simulation), we load a large particle-in-cell simulation with plasma and fields based on the MHD state. We use the MHD results to set the boundary conditions on the PIC simulation. The coupling between the two models is one way – the PIC results do not change the MHD results. In these calculations, we use the UCLA global MHD code and the iPic3D implicit particle-in-cell code. In this paper we describe this technique in detail. As an example of this approach, we present PIC results on reconnection in the magnetotail during a magnetospheric substorm.

Keywords

plasma dynamicsplasma simulationspace plasma physics
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Plasma Physics , Volume 85 , Issue 1 , February 2019 , 905850109
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

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