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Studies on equatorial shock formation during plasmaspheric refilling
| Content Provider | NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) |
|---|---|
| Author | Singh, Nagendra |
| Copyright Year | 1993 |
| Description | During the grant period starting August 1, 1992, our major effort has been on examining the presence of equatorially trapped hot plasma on plasmaspheric refilling. We performed one-dimensional PIC simulations of cold plasmas expanding into a hot plasma, consisting of hot anisotropic ions and warm isotropic electrons, trapped in a region of minimum magnetic field. Simulations showed that the electric potential barrier built up by the anisotropy of the hot ion population facilitates in the formation of electrostatic shocks when the cold ion beams begin to come into contact with the hot plasma. The shock formation occurs even when the cold ion beams are highly supersonic with respect to the ion-acoustic speed. This finding is interesting because equatorial shock formation during the early stage of plasmaspheric refilling has been debated over about two decades. In the past ion-ion instability has been invoked as the main mechanism for the coupling between the cold ion beams approaching the equator from the conjugate ionspheres. This coupling occurs when the beams are sufficiently slow; the beam velocity being less than three times the ion-acoustic speed. In the presence of hot plasma, the beams slow down by the potential barrier. The slowing down and the reflection process lead to the formation of the electrostatic shock even for highly supersonic ion beams. The mixing of hot and cold plasma was also studied. |
| File Size | 1909985 |
| Page Count | 54 |
| File Format | |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://archive.org/details/NASA_NTRS_Archive_19940009481 |
| Archival Resource Key | ark:/13960/t55f3r356 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher Date | 1993-01-01 |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | Geophysics High Temperature Plasmas Refilling Cold Plasmas Barrier Layers Atmospheric Models Wave-particle Interactions Plasmasphere Plasma Interactions Ion Beams Electromagnetic Coupling Ion Density Concentration Plasma Potentials Trapped Particles Shock Wave Propagation Ion Motion Magnetic Fields Particle in Cell Technique Plasma Heating Electrostatics Electrons Ntrs Nasa Technical Reports Server (ntrs) Nasa Technical Reports Server Aerodynamics Aircraft Aerospace Engineering Aerospace Aeronautic Space Science |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Technical Report |
