Kinetic models for space plasmas: Recent progress for the solar wind and the Earth’s magnetosphere
(2016) 30TH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON RAREFIED GAS DYNAMICS: RGD 30 — Location: Victoria, BC, Canada
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- Authors
Pierrard, Viviane 
- Abstract
- Recent models for the solar wind and the inner magnetosphere have been developed using the kinetic approach. The solution of the evolution equation is used to determine the velocity distribution function of the particles and their moments. The solutions depend on the approximations and assumptions made in the development of the models. Effects of suprathermal particles often observed in space plasmas are taken into account to show their influence on the characteristics of the plasma, with specific applications for coronal heating and solar wind acceleration. We describe in particular the results obtained with the collisionless exospheric approximation based on the Lorentzian velocity distribution function for the electrons and its recent progress in three dimensions. The effects of Coulomb collisions obtained by using a Fokker-Planck term in the evolution equation were also investigated, as well as effects of the whistler wave turbulence at electron scale and the kinetic Alfven waves at the proton scale. For solar wind especially, modelling efforts with both magnetohydrodynamic and kinetic treatments have been compared and combined in order to improve the predictions in the vicinity of the Earth. Photospheric magnetograms serve as observational input in semi-empirical coronal models used for estimating the plasma characteristics up to coronal heliocentric distances taken as boundary conditions in solar wind models. The solar wind fluctuations may influence the dynamics of the space environment of the Earth and generate geomagnetic storms. In the magnetosphere of the Earth, the trajectories of the particles are simulated to study the plasmasphere, the extension of the ionosphere along closed magnetic field lines and to better understand the physical mechanisms involved in the radiation belts dynamics.
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Citations
Pierrard, V., Moschou, S. P., Lazar, M., Borremans, K., & Rosson, G. L. (2016). Kinetic models for space plasmas: Recent progress for the solar wind and the Earth’s magnetosphere. AIP Conference Proceedings, 1786(1786), 160001. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4967658 (Original work published 2016)