P21A-2090
Charaterizing the O+ ion plume from Hybrid simulations: comparison to MAVEN observations
Tuesday, 15 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Ronan Modolo1, Francois Leblanc1, Jean-Yves Chaufray1, Ludivine Leclercq2, Rosa Esteban-Hernandez1, Shannon Curry3, Yaxue Dong4, Dave A Brain5, Charlie Bowers5, Janet G Luhmann6, James P McFadden6, Jasper S Halekas7, Jared R Espley8, John E P Connerney8 and Bruce Martin Jakosky9, (1)LATMOS Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales, Paris Cedex 05, France, (2)Université de Versailles St Quentin, paris, France, (3)Space Sciences Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, United States, (4)University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, (5)University of Colorado at Boulder, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder, CO, United States, (6)University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States, (7)University of Iowa, Physics and Astronomy, Iowa City, IA, United States, (8)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (9)Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder, CO, United States
Abstract:
MAVEN observations show a substantial plume-like distribution of escaping ions from the Martian atmosphere. It represents an important ion escape channel with large fluxes (Brain et al, 2015; Dong et al, 2015, Curry et al, 2015). Such structure is organized by the solar wind convection electric field and it is located in the MSE northward hemisphere. Global hybrid models (eg Modolo et al, 2005, 2012; Kallio et al, 2006; Brecht et al, 2006) reproduce nicely this plume. To further characterize this population, hybrid simulations have been performed with upstream solar wind conditions observed by MAVEN. Simulation results along the spacecraft track present signatures of high energetic O+ ions similar to MAVEN measurements. Comparison of simulated 3D distribution functions of this population are compared to STATIC and SWIA observations. Moreover a comparison of hybrid results with statistical ion fluxes maps derived from MAVEN (Dong et al, 2015; Brain et al, 2015) have been conducted and a reasonable agreement is found .
