EGU2020-13186, updated on 12 Jun 2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-13186
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Global Ten-Moment Multifluid Simulations of the Solar Wind Interaction with Mercury: From the Planetary Conducting Core to the Dynamic Magnetosphere

Chuanfei Dong1, Liang Wang1, Ammar Hakim1, Amitava Bhattacharjee1, James Slavin2, Gina DiBraccio3, and Kai Germaschewski4
Chuanfei Dong et al.
  • 1Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, United States (C. Dong: dcfy@princeton.edu)
  • 2University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States
  • 3NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States
  • 4University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States

For the first time, we explore the tightly coupled interior‐magnetosphere system of Mercury by employing a three‐dimensional ten‐moment multifluid model. This novel fluid model incorporates the nonideal effects including the Hall effect, electron inertia, and tensorial pressures that are critical for collisionless magnetic reconnection; therefore, it is particularly well suited for investigating collisionless magnetic reconnection in Mercury's magnetotail and at the planet's magnetopause. The model is able to reproduce the observed magnetic field vectors, field‐aligned currents, and cross‐tail current sheet asymmetry (beyond magnetohydrodynamic approach), and the simulation results are in good agreement with spacecraft observations. We also study the magnetospheric response of Mercury to an extreme event with an enhanced solar wind dynamic pressure, which demonstrates the significance of induction effects resulting from the electromagnetically coupled interior. More interestingly, plasmoids (or flux ropes) are formed in Mercury's magnetotail during the event, indicating the highly dynamic nature of Mercury's magnetosphere. This novel ten‐moment multifluid model represents a crucial step toward establishing a revolutionary approach that enables the investigation of Mercury's tightly coupled interior‐magnetosphere system beyond the traditional fluid model and has the potential to enhance the science returns of both the MESSENGER mission and the BepiColombo mission.

How to cite: Dong, C., Wang, L., Hakim, A., Bhattacharjee, A., Slavin, J., DiBraccio, G., and Germaschewski, K.: Global Ten-Moment Multifluid Simulations of the Solar Wind Interaction with Mercury: From the Planetary Conducting Core to the Dynamic Magnetosphere, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-13186, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-13186, 2020

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