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RCM‐E simulation of bimodal transport in the plasma sheet
Author(s) -
Yang Jian,
Wolf Richard A.,
Toffoletto Frank R.,
Sazykin Stanislav,
Wang ChihPing
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2014gl059400
Subject(s) - plasma sheet , convection , adiabatic process , physics , plasma , mechanics , geophysics , ionosphere , magnetosphere , computational physics , thermodynamics , nuclear physics
Plasma sheet transport is bimodal, consisting of both large‐scale adiabatic convection and intermittent bursty flows in both earthward and tailward directions. We present two comparison simulations with the Rice Convection Model—Equilibrium (RCM‐E) to investigate how those high‐speed flows affect the average configuration of the magnetosphere and its coupling to the ionosphere. One simulation represents pure large‐scale slow‐flow convection with time‐independent boundary conditions; in addition to the background convection, the other simulation randomly imposes bubbles and blobs through the tailward boundary to a degree consistent with observed statistical properties of flows. Our results show that the bursty flows can significantly alter the magnetic and entropy profiles in the plasma sheet as well as the field‐aligned current distributions in the ionosphere, bringing them into much better agreement with average observations.