TY - JOUR
T1 - Global Ten-Moment Multifluid Simulations of the Solar Wind Interaction with Mercury
T2 - From the Planetary Conducting Core to the Dynamic Magnetosphere
AU - Dong, Chuanfei
AU - Wang, Liang
AU - Hakim, Ammar
AU - Bhattacharjee, Amitava
AU - Slavin, James A.
AU - DiBraccio, Gina A.
AU - Germaschewski, Kai
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Manasvi Lingam, Ryan Dewey, Suzanne Imber, Yuxi Chen, Yao Zhou, Chang Liu, and Y. Y. Lau for the helpful discussions and comments. This work was supported by NSF Grants AGS‐0962698 and AGS‐1338944, NASA Grants 80NSSC19K0621, NNH13AW51I, and 80NSSC18K0288, and DOE Grant DE‐SC0006670. The MESSENGER data used in this study are available from the PPI node of the Planetary Data System ( http://ppi.pds.nasa.gov ), and the model data were obtained from simulations using the GKEYLL framework developed at Princeton University, which is publicly available online ( https://bitbucket.org/ammarhakim/gkeyll ). Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High‐End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center, the Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory through the INCITE program, supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE‐AC05‐00OR22725, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE‐AC02‐05CH11231, Cheyenne (doi:10.5065/D6RX99HX) provided by NCAR's CISL, sponsored by NSF, and Trillian, a Cray XE6m‐200 supercomputer at the UNH supported by the NSF MRI program under Grant PHY‐1229408.
PY - 2019/11/16
Y1 - 2019/11/16
N2 - For the first time, we explore the tightly coupled interior-magnetosphere system of Mercury by employing a three-dimensional ten-moment multifluid model. This novel fluid model incorporates the nonideal effects including the Hall effect, electron inertia, and tensorial pressures that are critical for collisionless magnetic reconnection; therefore, it is particularly well suited for investigating collisionless magnetic reconnection in Mercury's magnetotail and at the planet's magnetopause. The model is able to reproduce the observed magnetic field vectors, field-aligned currents, and cross-tail current sheet asymmetry (beyond magnetohydrodynamic approach), and the simulation results are in good agreement with spacecraft observations. We also study the magnetospheric response of Mercury to a hypothetical extreme event with an enhanced solar wind dynamic pressure, which demonstrates the significance of induction effects resulting from the electromagnetically coupled interior. More interestingly, plasmoids (or flux ropes) are formed in Mercury's magnetotail during the event, indicating the highly dynamic nature of Mercury's magnetosphere.
AB - For the first time, we explore the tightly coupled interior-magnetosphere system of Mercury by employing a three-dimensional ten-moment multifluid model. This novel fluid model incorporates the nonideal effects including the Hall effect, electron inertia, and tensorial pressures that are critical for collisionless magnetic reconnection; therefore, it is particularly well suited for investigating collisionless magnetic reconnection in Mercury's magnetotail and at the planet's magnetopause. The model is able to reproduce the observed magnetic field vectors, field-aligned currents, and cross-tail current sheet asymmetry (beyond magnetohydrodynamic approach), and the simulation results are in good agreement with spacecraft observations. We also study the magnetospheric response of Mercury to a hypothetical extreme event with an enhanced solar wind dynamic pressure, which demonstrates the significance of induction effects resulting from the electromagnetically coupled interior. More interestingly, plasmoids (or flux ropes) are formed in Mercury's magnetotail during the event, indicating the highly dynamic nature of Mercury's magnetosphere.
KW - Mercury's dynamic magnetosphere
KW - collisionless magnetic reconnection and flux ropes
KW - field-aligned current
KW - induction response from Mercury's conducting core
KW - magnetotail asymmetry
KW - ten-moment multifluid model
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U2 - 10.1029/2019GL083180
DO - 10.1029/2019GL083180
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85074829772
VL - 46
SP - 11584
EP - 11596
JO - Geophysical Research Letters
JF - Geophysical Research Letters
SN - 0094-8276
IS - 21
ER -