Stability of Thin Current Sheet in the Magnetotail: Theory, Simulations, and Observations

磁尾中薄电流片的稳定性：理论、模拟和观察

• 批准号: 0903915
• 负责人: Amitava Bhattacharjee
• 金额: $ 36万
• 依托单位: University of New Hampshire
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-07-15 至 2013-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0903915&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Stability; Thin; Current; Sheet; Magnetotail

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).The principal goal of this research program is to investigate the role of ballooning instabilities, collisionless reconnection and other current-driven instabilities in the triggering and temporal evolution of magnetospheric substorms. The project will use a combination of Hall MHD (Magnetohydrodynamic), fully kinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations, and analytical theory. The project will carry out a comparative study of the linear stability of ballooning modes in realistic magnetotail equilibria to determine the role of plasma compressibility and trapped particle effects in the fluid and kinetic regimes. It will also investigate the nonlinear evolution of ballooning instabilities in realistic magnetotail equilibria using similar initial conditions to determine if and how kinetic effects modify the rapid exponential nonlinear growth. The project will investigate current-driven kinetic instabilities within extended thin current sheets in the magnetotail, and the interactive coupling between reconnection, ballooning and other current-driven instabilities for magnetotail configurations with embedded thin current sheets. The results of theory and simulations will be compared with observations from the European CLUSTER satellites and NASA's THEMIS mission. Although the focus of this project is on applications to magnetospheric physics, the stability of thin current sheets is a subject of broad and interdisciplinary interest. In particular, the role of collisionless reconnection and ballooning instability in the dynamics of thin current sheets has important applications to coronal physics as well as to sawtooth oscillations and current disruption phenomena in fusion and other laboratory plasmas. The project also includes a significant education and public outreach component, which includes lectures at a summer institute at the University of New Hampshire called Project SMART (Science and Mathematics Achievement through Research Training). The SMART program provides research experiences for high school students. In addition to the PI and the Department of Energy funded collaborator at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the project involves one Research Scientist and two junior faculty members, one of whom is a woman.

该奖项是根据2009年的《美国复苏与再投资法》（公法111-5）资助的。该研究计划的主要目标是调查磁层不能进行磁层替代物的触发和时间进化中的膨胀不稳定性，无碰撞重新连接和其他当前驱动的稳定性的作用。 该项目将结合MHD（磁性水力动力学），完全动力学粒子（PIC）模拟和分析理论的组合。该项目将对逼真的磁尾平衡中气囊模式的线性稳定性进行比较研究，以确定血浆可压缩性和捕获粒子效应在流体和动力学方案中的作用。它还将使用类似的初始条件来研究逼真的磁尾平衡中气球不稳定性的非线性演变，以确定动力学效应是否以及如何改变了快速指数的非线性生长。该项目将调查磁尾栏的扩展薄电流板中的电流驱动的动力学不稳定性，以及重新连接，气球和其他电流驱动的不稳定性之间的交互式耦合，用于具有嵌入式薄电流板的磁尾配置。理论和模拟的结果将与欧洲群集卫星和NASA的Themis任务的观察结果进行比较。尽管该项目的重点是应用于磁层物理学的应用，但薄电流表的稳定性是具有广泛和跨学科的主题。特别是，无碰撞重新连接和气球不稳定性在薄电流板动力学中的作用在融合和其他实验室等离子体中对冠状物理以及锯齿振荡和当前破坏现象具有重要的应用。该项目还包括重要的教育和公共宣传部分，其中包括在新罕布什尔大学的夏季学院的讲座，名为“智能项目”（通过研究培训）。 SMART计划为高中生提供研究经验。除了洛斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室的PI和能源部资助的合作者外，该项目还涉及一名研究科学家和两名初级教职员工，其中一名是女性。