Modeled Ionospheric and Electrodynamic Response to Electron Precipitation Arcs of Varying Hardness, Width, Edge Sharpness and Orientation

Physics – Plasma Physics

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[2407] Ionosphere / Auroral Ionosphere, [2409] Ionosphere / Current Systems, [7815] Space Plasma Physics / Electrostatic Structures

Scientific paper

We present results of a study of the electrodynamics of meso-scale precipitation arcs using a recently developed, high-resolution, numerical model of the high-latitude coupled thermosphere-ionosphere-electrodynamics. The model treats six ion species and electrons with an 8-moment approximation, and it has a transport code for suprathermal electrons. The model also uses the Navier-Stokes equations to treat eight neutral species which are assumed to have a common drift velocity. The model works in the 2-D, meridional plane and features sub-kilometre resolution. Its current practical upper and lower boundaries are 600 and 90 km. The main focus of our study is understanding how outputs such as field aligned currents (FAC) and thermospheric heating are related to factors such as the hardness and intensity of auroral precipitation, the width of the arc and the sharpness of its latitudinal cut-off, the angle between the plane of the arc and the convection electric field, and the coupling of ion-neutral chemistry. The results of this investigation serve to clarify the relationships between solar/magnetospheric conditions/drivers and thermospheric density anomalies. We present analysis for both soft and hard electron precipitation, and for both gradual and sharp latitudinal boundaries of the precipitation. Our results also show that varying the angle between the arc and the convection field by a small amount can have a profound effect on the FAC. Finally, we describe initial steps towards including a more sophisticated model of the magnetospheric dynamo in our computations.

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