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Including Kinetic Ion Effects in the Coupled Global Ionospheric Outflow Solution
Author(s) -
Glocer A.,
Toth G.,
Fok M.C.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: space physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-9402
pISSN - 2169-9380
DOI - 10.1002/2018ja025241
Subject(s) - outflow , physics , computational physics , magnetosphere , kinetic energy , ionosphere , cusp (singularity) , polar , ion , polar wind , geophysics , statistical physics , plasma , meteorology , classical mechanics , nuclear physics , geometry , magnetopause , astronomy , mathematics , quantum mechanics
Abstract We present a new expansion of the Polar Wind Outflow Model to include kinetic ions using the particle‐in‐cell (PIC) approach with Monte Carlo collisions. This implementation uses the original hydrodynamic solution at low altitudes for efficiency and couples to the kinetic solution at higher altitudes to account for kinetic effects important for ionospheric outflow. The modeling approach also includes wave‐particle interactions, suprathermal electrons, and a hybrid parallel computing approach combining shared and distributed memory paralellization. The resulting model is thus a comprehensive, global, model of ionospheric outflow that can be run efficiently on large supercomputing clusters. We demonstrate the model's capability to study a range of problems starting with the comparison of kinetic and hydrodynamic solutions along a single field line in the sunlit polar cap, and progressing to the altitude evolution of the ion conic distribution in the cusp region. The interplay between convection and the cusp on the global outflow solution is also examined. Finally, we demonstrate the impact of these new model features on the magnetosphere by presenting the first two‐way coupled ionospheric outflow‐magnetosphere calculation including kinetic ion effects.