[Table of Contents]

Plasma and Fusion Research

Volume 8, 2406132 (2013)

Regular Articles

Two-Dimensional AMR-PIC Plasma Simulation for Mini-Magnetosphere of Magnetized Object
Masaharu MATSUMOTO, Hideyuki USUI, Masanori NUNAMI1), Masao NAKAMURA2) and Iku SHINOHARA3)
Kobe University, 1-1 Rokkodai-cho, Nada-ku, Kobe 657-8501, Japan
1)
National Institute for Fusion Science, 322-6 Oroshi-cho, Toki 509-5292, Japan
2)
Osaka Prefecture University, 1-1 Gakuen-cho, Naka-ku, Sakai 599-8531, Japan
3)
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, 3-1-1 Yoshinodai, Chuo-ku, Sagamihara 252-5210, Japan
(Received 7 December 2012 / Accepted 1 August 2013 / Published 26 September 2013)

Abstract

A parallelized two-dimensional full particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations with an adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) technique for the interaction of solar wind with kinetic scale magnetosphere around a magnetic sail are conducted. For multi-scale simulations, the newly developed AMR-PIC code has a method to modify the grid size and time step interval of computational domain in the midst of the simulations temporally and locally. In the simulation results under the typical working condition introducing the AMR technique, it is shown that the direction of interplanetary magnetic field depend strongly on the magnetospheric configuration including electron dynamics and Alfven bow shock structure. Although more validation studies are needed, the AMR-PIC code shows the worth of development for multi-scale simulations.

Keywords

kinetic scale magnetosphere, particle-in-cell, adaptive mesh refinement, solar wind, space plasma

DOI: 10.1585/pfr.8.2406132

Full Text

PDF format (2.2Mbytes) PDF Download

References

  • [1] R.M. Zubrin et al., J. Spacecraft Rockets 28, 197 (1991).
  • [2] R.M. Winglee et al., J. Geophys. Res. 105, 21067 (2000).
  • [3] H. Yamakawa et al., Acta Astronautica 59, 777 (2006).
  • [4] K. Fujita, J. Space Technol. Sci. 20, 26 (2004).
  • [5] Y. Kajimura et al., J. Propul. Power 28, 652 (2012).
  • [6] C.K. Birdsall and A.B. Langdon, Plasma Physics via Computer Simulation (Reprinted), (Taylor & Francis, New York, 2005).
  • [7] H. Usui et al., Procedia Comp. Sci. 4, 2337 (2011).
  • [8] K. Fujimoto, J. Comput. Phys. 230, 8508 (2011).
  • [9] Y. Yagi et al., Proc. JSST2012 International Conference on Simulation Technology, Sep.27-28, Kobe, 587 (2012).

This paper may be cited as follows:

Masaharu MATSUMOTO, Hideyuki USUI, Masanori NUNAMI, Masao NAKAMURA and Iku SHINOHARA, Plasma Fusion Res. 8, 2406132 (2013).