Global Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations of Turbulence in the Plasma Sheet

Details Global Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations of Turbulence in the Plasma Sheet Global Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations of Turbulence in the Plasma Sheet

Dec 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufmsm51c1835e&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #SM51C-1835

Physics

[2700] Magnetospheric Physics, [2723] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetic Reconnection, [2760] Magnetospheric Physics / Plasma Convection, [2764] Magnetospheric Physics / Plasma Sheet

Scientific paper

The sources, properties and dissipation of plasma sheet turbulence are examined using global MHD simulations. The simulations used idealized purely southward and northward IMF driving conditions to eliminate the effect of solar wind and IMF variations. The power spectral densities and probability distribution functions computed from the results when compared with those obtained from spacecraft observations were found to have properties characteristic of magneto-fluid turbulence. The MHD simulation exhibited nested vortices on multiple scales, with the largest scales associated with reconnection outflows and the diversion of high speed flows in the near-Earth region in the southward IMF case and boundary waves in the northward IMF case. The vortices in the plasma sheet are part of three dimensional structures extending to the ionosphere. Interplay between turbulence and the reconnection process is probably present. Scaling arguments show that the scale at which turbulence is dissipated is consistent with the resistivity in the model. Numerical experiments show that the dissipation of the turbulence is not sensitive to the details of resistive dissipation for realistic resistivity models.

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