Kinetic 3D Modeling of the Solar Wind Interaction with the Moon and the Formation of the Lunar Wake-Tail

Details Kinetic 3D Modeling of the Solar Wind Interaction with the Moon and the Formation of the Lunar Wake-Tail Kinetic 3D Modeling of the Solar Wind Interaction with the Moon and the Formation of the Lunar Wake-Tail

Sep 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008epsc.conf..487s&link_type=abstract

European Planetary Science Congress 2008, Proceedings of the conference held 21-25 September, 2008 in Münster, Germany. Online a

Computer Science

Scientific paper

Abstract When the solar wind interacts with the Moon, the lunar surface acts as a diamagnetic obstacle removing plasma from the solar wind and a density depletion region is formed on the nightside. To examine the refilling of the density depletion region and the formation of the Moon's wake-tail, a high resolution global hybrid simulation is used. The hybrid simulation (particle ions, fluid electrons) uses realistic spatial scales for the lunar obstacle and the system size. The tail refilling process on the Moon's nightside can be described approximately by a plasma expansion into a vacuum driven by the thermal motion of particles along the interplanetary magnetic field lines [1]. Parallel electric fields created due to the pressure gradient at the edge of the density cavity further accelerate ions into the density depletion region and highly anisotropic distribution functions are formed. These anisotropic ion distribution functions lead to the generation of electromagnetic waves near the ion cyclotron frequency along the length of the wake-tail further downstream. A density increase at the center of the plasma depletion region also tends to form downstream where the ions beams from either side of the cavity meet and interact. Results will be shown from new three dimensional hybrid simulation runs of the solar wind interaction with the Moon and compared with data from the Wind satellite when it made flybys through the Moon's wake tail.

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