Europlanet Science Congress 2020
Virtual meeting
21 September – 9 October 2020
Europlanet Science Congress 2020
Virtual meeting
21 September – 9 October 2020
EPSC Abstracts
Vol. 14, EPSC2020-261, 2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-261
Europlanet Science Congress 2020
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Cross-comparison of global simulation models applied to Mercury's dayside magnetosphere

Sae Aizawa1,2, Lea Griton1,3, Shahab Fatemi4,5, Willi Exner6, Jan Deca7, Filippo Pantellini3, Manabu Yagi11, Daniel Heyner6, Vincent Génot1, Nicolas André1, Jorge Amaya8, Go Murakami9, and Hideyuki Usui10
Sae Aizawa et al.
  • 1IRAP, Toulouse, France (sae.aizawa@irap.omp.eu)
  • 2Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan
  • 3LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université de Paris, Meudon, France
  • 4Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Kiruna, Sweden
  • 5Department of Physics at Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden
  • 6Institute for Geophysics and extraterrestrial Physics, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany
  • 7Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, USA
  • 8CmPA, Mathematics Department, KU Leuven, Belgium
  • 9ISAS/JAXA, Sagamihara, Japan
  • 10Kobe University, Kobe, Japan
  • 11RIKEN, Kobe, Japan

We present the first comparison of multiple global simulations of the solar wind interaction with Mercury’s dayside magnetosphere, conducted in the framework of the international collaborative project SHOTS - Studies on Hermean magnetosphere Oriented Theories and Simulations. Two magnetohydrodynamic and two hybrid simulation codes are used to investigate the global response of the Hermean magnetosphere to a northward-oriented interplanetary magnetic field. We cross-compare the results of the four codes for a theoretical case and a MESSENGER orbit with similar upstream plasma conditions. The models agree on bowshock and magnetopause locations at 2.1 ± 0.1 and 1.4 ± 0.08 Mercury planetary radii, respectively. The latter locations may be influenced by subtle differences in the treatment of the plasma boundary at the planetary surface. The predicted magnetosheath thickness varies less between the codes. Finally, we also sample the plasma data along virtual trajectories of BepiColombo’s Magnetospheric and Planetary Orbiter. Our ability to accurately predict the structure of the Hermean magnetosphere aids the analysis of the onboard plasma measurements of past and future magnetospheric missions.

How to cite: Aizawa, S., Griton, L., Fatemi, S., Exner, W., Deca, J., Pantellini, F., Yagi, M., Heyner, D., Génot, V., André, N., Amaya, J., Murakami, G., and Usui, H.: Cross-comparison of global simulation models applied to Mercury's dayside magnetosphere, Europlanet Science Congress 2020, online, 21 Sep–9 Oct 2020, EPSC2020-261, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-261, 2020.