Physics – Plasma Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 2006
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufmsm21c0274t&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #SM21C-0274
Physics
Plasma Physics
0644 Numerical Methods, 7800 Space Plasma Physics, 7839 Nonlinear Phenomena (4400, 6944), 7859 Transport Processes, 7863 Turbulence (4490)
Scientific paper
On the flank side of the Earth's magnetosphere (MSP), a velocity shear layer is structured by the velocity jump between the fast plasma flow of the solar wind (SW) and the plasma convection in the Earth's magnetosphere. In that layer it is known that the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI) is excited by the velocity shear. It has been indicated by many researchers that the nonlinear development of the KHI surely builds a large scale vortex structure, which enables efficient plasma mixing between the SW and MSP plasmas. Computational studies on the development of the KHI-origin vortex structure have been carried out for many years. In those studies a periodic boundary condition has been chosen as a standard model. However, that condition seems inconvenient to observe the long-time development of the vortex structure because leeward domain may influence on windward. Recently, comparison between periodic- and free-boundary conditions has been made using two-dimensional (2-D) hydrodynamic (HD) simulations to investigate the effects of the boundary conditions on the development of the KHI-origin vortices. For the free boundary case, a complicated structure has been detected in the transition from the linear- to the nonlinear phase of the KHI. It is spatially asymmetric regions that appear at the head and the rearmost of a chain of vortices. In those regions an embedded vortex-like flow is produced to make the regions stagnant. This stagnancy plays an important role in the subsequent vortex mixing by the KHI and in the sudden wide-spread of the vortex. This result indicates that wide-spread plasma mixing between SW and MSP plasmas may occur in the early stage. In this research, we have performed three-dimensional (3-D) HD simulations to inspect the 3-D effects on the plasma mixing as a foothold in adaptation to space. The simulation domains are divided into three regions. That is, one KHI-unstable layer with a finite thickness of D is put between two KHI-stable regions. In order to see the effects of the KHI-stable regions on the KHI-unstable layer, we have made a systematic survey varying D. Then comparison between the 3-D and the recent 2-D results has been done. The detailed results will be shown in the presentation.
Fujimoto Minoru
Hasegawa Hidenao
Takagi Kenji
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