Plasma turbulence within cometary plasma environments
- 1Institute for Plasma Science and Technology, National Research Council, Bari, Italy (francesco.pucci@istp.cnr.it)
- 2Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Kiruna, Sweden
- 3Laboratoire Lagrange, Observatoire Côte d’Azur, Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Nice, France
- 4LPC2E, CNRS, Univ. Orléans, CNES, Orléans, France
- 5Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria
- 6LPP, CNRS/Sorbonne Université/Université Paris-Saclay/Observatoire de Paris/Ecole Polytechnique Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Palaiseau, France
- 7Dipartimento di Fisica, University of Pisa, Italy
We present a numerical work in which the interaction between a comet and the solar wind is studied in 2D in the plane perpendicular to the solar wind mean field direction. Our simulations are conducted with the hybrid Particle-in-Cell (PIC) code Menura that allows for the injection of a turbulent solar wind [1].
First, we consider the case of laminar solar wind and we present a study on the equivalent Mach number of the two-ion-species (cometary and solar wind) plasma surrounding the comet. We develop an expression for the Mach number having suitable limits in the two asymptotic cases of infinite cometary and solar wind ion density; our expression is derived by extending previous studies on bi-ion plasma models [2]. Through numerical simulations in which the cometary activity is varied, we show how our Mach number is able to unambiguously describe the existence and location of the cometary shock.
Second, we compare two runs, one with a laminar and one with a turbulent solar wind in the case of moderate cometary activity. We divide the simulation domain into the regions upstream and downstream the cometary shock. We analyze how plasma turbulence properties are affected by the passage through the shock in the case of a turbulent solar wind. Then, we divide the downstream region into three different regions identified by different solar wind-to-cometary ion density ratios. We study the downstream turbulence properties in the case of laminar and turbulent impinging solar wind and how they vary in those regions.
[1] Behar, E., Fatemi, S., Henri, P., & Holmström, M. (2022, May). Menura: a code for simulating the interaction between a turbulent solar wind and solar system bodies. In Annales Geophysicae (Vol. 40, No. 3, pp. 281-297). Copernicus GmbH.
[2] Dubinin, E. M., Sauer, K., McKenzie, J. F., & Chanteur, G. (2002). Nonlinear waves and solitons propagating perpendicular to the magnetic field in bi-ion plasma with finite plasma pressure. Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics, 9(2), 87-99.
How to cite: Pucci, F., Behar, E., Henri, P., Simon Wedlund, C., and Ballerini, G.: Plasma turbulence within cometary plasma environments, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-9003, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-9003, 2023.
