Mass Loading at the Magnetopause through the Plasmaspheric Plume

Abstract:

An investigation of the transport of the plasmaspheric plasma to the dayside magnetopause through plasmaspheric plumes under disturbed geomagnetic conditions is conducted by numerical simulations using the Dynamic Fluid-Kinetic (DyFK) model. The simulation calculates the field-aligned density distributions of multiple ion species (H+/He+/O+) in a plasmaspheric flux tube that corotates while convecting toward the dayside magnetopause. When the convection is enhanced, a plasmaspheric plume is formed and plasmaspheric plasma mass loads to the dayside magnetopause. The effect of wave-particle interactions on the density distributions is also studied.