Speaker
Description
A 3D implicit particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation has been used to model the Earth’s magnetosphere to investigate the development of the ring current when electron kinetics are included. Initialized with starting conditions from a global magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation, the computational burden for modeling the entire magnetosphere using a PIC code is reduced and allows the system to evolve self-consistently including the effects of both ion and electron kinetics. The inclusion of both species’ kinetics has been shown to enhance particle energization and alter local features of the magnetosphere’s boundaries. The sharpening of the bow shock, magnetopause, and current sheet increases wave activity near these boundaries. This work examines electron velocity distributions taken from the global model. Anisotropic distributions from the global simulation are first examined using the WHAMP linear dispersion solver to determine kinetic instabilities and the linear wave growth produced by such distributions. A local, high-resolution 2.5D electromagnetic PIC simulation is then initialized with the anisotropic electron velocity distributions to examine the ensuing nonlinear wave-particle interactions. Of particular interest is the pitch-angle scattering of electrons into the loss cone by waves that contribute to the loss of electrons from the magnetosphere through precipitation into the Earth’s atmosphere.
