Heavy Ion Effects on Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability: Hybrid Study

Abstract:

Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI) is a candidate mechanism for solar wind tansportation into the magnetosphere. The statistical study of Bouhram et al. 2005 has shown that heavy ions could dominate the magnetopause for as much as 30% of the time on the dusk side. Thus the influence of heavy ions in solar wind-magnetosphere coupling should not be neglected. However, the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) linear theory for KHI does not include any ion effects, and people working on the heavy ion effects have not come to an agreement either. Whether the heavy ions promote or inhibit the KHI still remains not well addressed. With a two-dimensional hybrid model, we investigated the effects of ion mass number on the KHI growth rate, starting from the simplest case of uniform density and uniform magnetic field perpendicular to the shear flow. It is shown that the growth rate of the KHI is lower with a heavier mass number. We try to to derive the linear theory for the kinetic KHI and compare it with the hybrid simulation results. The linear theory with ion effects considered is going to be further verified with varying heavy ion fractions and finite magnetic shear. More implications for the dawn-dusk asymmetry of KHI on planetary magnetopause are desirable when comparing the results of opposite magnetic field directions relative to the flow vorticity.