Spacecraft observations of earth's magnetosphere and other planetary magnetospheres have shown that kinetic ION and electron particle effects play a major role in the transport, acceleration, and loss…

This is a $599,582.37 federal grant award from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to conduct kinetic simulations of the solar wind interaction with Mercury's magnetosphere. The research aims to improve understanding of the role of kinetic physics in magnetospheric dynamics, which is relevant to NASA's goals of studying solar system interactions and fundamental physical processes. UCLA will leverage its facilities, faculty expertise, and supercomputing capabilities to perform the fully self-consistent particle-in-cell simulations, using data from the MESSENGER spacecraft to initialize and validate the model. This grant does not have a set-aside designation. UCLA's parent organization is the State of California Controller's Office, which has also received federal grants and served as a subcontractor on other government contracts.

Spacecraft observations of earth's magnetosphere and other planetary magnetospheres have shown that kinetic ION and electron particle effects play a major role in the transport, acceleration, and loss of plasma within the magnetospheric system. Kinetic processes include reconnection, the breakdown of particle adiabaticity and wave-particle interactions. Because of the vast range in spatial scales involved in magnetospheric dynamics, from local electron debye length scales (~ meters) to solar wind/ planetary magnetic scale lengths (tens to hundreds of planetary radii), fully self-consistent kinetic simulations of a global planetary magnetosphere remain challenging. Most global simulations of earth's and other planet's magnetosphere are carried out using MHD, enhanced MHD, e.g., hall MHD, hybrid (particle ions, fluid electrons), or a combination of MHD and particle in cell (PIC) simulations. In this research project we will carry out fully kinetic ION and electron self-consistent PIC simulations of the solar wind interaction with mercury's magnetosphere. Using an implicit PIC simulation carried out on massively parallel supercomputers, mercury's relatively small, but highly kinetic magnetosphere will be examined using realistic parameters. How the self-consistent inclusion of electrons affects magnetic reconnection, particle transport and acceleration of plasma at mercury will be determined. Messenger spacecraft observations will be used both to initiate and validate the global PIC simulations to achieve a deeper understanding of the role kinetic physics play in magnetospheric dynamics. This research is relevant to the NASA high level science goals to determine the interaction of the sun with the solar system and to discover and characterize fundamental processes that occur both within the heliosphere and throughout the universe.