Solar wind access to lunar polar craters: Feedback between surface charging and plasma expansion

Details Solar wind access to lunar polar craters: Feedback between surface charging and plasma expansion Solar wind access to lunar polar craters: Feedback between surface charging and plasma expansion

Oct 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011georl..3819202z&link_type=abstract

Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 38, Issue 19, CiteID L19202

Physics

Plasma Physics

1

Magnetospheric Physics: Solar Wind Interactions With Unmagnetized Bodies, Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects: Moon (1221), Space Plasma Physics: Charged Particle Motion And Acceleration, Space Plasma Physics: Electrostatic Structures

Scientific paper

Determining the plasma environment within permanently shadowed lunar craters is critical to understanding local processes such as surface charging, electrostatic dust transport, volatile sequestration, and space weathering. In order to investigate the nature of this plasma environment, the first two-dimensional kinetic simulations of solar wind expansion into a lunar crater with a self-consistent plasma-surface interaction have been undertaken. The present results reveal how the plasma expansion into a crater couples with the electrically-charged lunar surface to produce a quasi-steady wake structure. In particular, there is a negative feedback between surface charging and ambipolar wake potential that allows an equilibrium to be achieved, with secondary electron emission strongly moderating the process. A range of secondary electron yields is explored, and two distinct limits are highlighted in which either surface charging or ambipolar expansion is responsible for determining the overall wake structure.

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