A study of the variation of physical conditions in the cometary coma based on a 3D multi-fluid model

Abstract:

Physics-based numerical coma models are desirable whether to interpret the spacecraft observations of the inner coma or to compare with the ground-based observations of the outer coma. One example is Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method, which has been successfully adopted to simulate the coma under various complex conditions. However, for bright comets with large production rates, the time step in DSMC model has to be tiny to accommodate the small mean free path and the high collision frequency. In addition a truly time-variable 3D DSMC model would still be computationally difficult or even impossible under most circumstances. In this work, we develop a multi-neutral-fluid model based on BATS-R-US in the University of Michigan's SWMF (Space Weather Modeling Framework), which can serve as a useful alternative to DSMC methods to compute both the inner and the outer coma and to treat time-variable phenomena. This model treats H₂O, OH, H₂, O, H and CO₂ as separate fluids and each fluid has its own velocity and temperature. But collisional interactions can also couple all fluids together. Collisional interactions tend to decrease the velocity differences and are also able to re-distribute the excess energy deposited by chemical reactions among all species. To compute the momentum and energy transfer caused by such interactions self-consistently, collisions between fluids, whose efficiency is proportional to the densities, are included as well as heating from various chemical reactions. By applying the model to comets with different production rates (i.e. 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, 1P/Halley, etc.), we are able to study how the heating efficiency varies with cometocentric distances and production rates. The preliminary results and comparison are presented and discussed. This work has been partially supported by grant NNX14AG84G from the NASA Planetary Atmospheres Program, and US Rosetta contracts JPL #1266313, JPL #1266314 and JPL #1286489.