10,267 research outputs found
Effects of electrojet turbulence on a magnetosphere-ionosphere simulation of a geomagnetic storm
Ionospheric conductance plays an important role in regulating the response of the magnetosphere‐ionosphere system to solar wind driving. Typically, models of magnetosphere‐ionosphere coupling include changes to ionospheric conductance driven by extreme ultraviolet ionization and electron precipitation. This paper shows that effects driven by the Farley‐Buneman instability can also create significant enhancements in the ionospheric conductance, with substantial impacts on geospace. We have implemented a method of including electrojet turbulence (ET) effects into the ionospheric conductance model utilized within geospace simulations. Our particular implementation is tested with simulations of the Lyon‐Fedder‐Mobarry global magnetosphere model coupled with the Rice Convection Model of the inner magnetosphere. We examine the impact of including ET‐modified conductances in a case study of the geomagnetic storm of 17 March 2013. Simulations with ET show a 13% reduction in the cross polar cap potential at the beginning of the storm and up to 20% increases in the Pedersen and Hall conductance. These simulation results show better agreement with Defense Meteorological Satellite Program observations, including capturing features of subauroral polarization streams. The field‐aligned current (FAC) patterns show little differences during the peak of storm and agree well with Active Magnetosphere and Planetary Electrodynamics Response Experiment (AMPERE) reconstructions. Typically, the simulated FAC densities are stronger and at slightly higher latitudes than shown by AMPERE. The inner magnetospheric pressures derived from Tsyganenko‐Sitnov empirical magnetic field model show that the inclusion of the ET effects increases the peak pressure and brings the results into better agreement with the empirical model.This material is based upon work supported by NASA grants NNX14AI13G, NNX13AF92G, and NNX16AB80G. The National Center for Atmospheric Research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. This work used the XSEDE and TACC computational facilities, supported by National Science Foundation grant ACI-1053575. We would like to acknowledge high-performance computing support from Yellowstone (ark:/85065/d7wd3xhc) provided by NCAR's Computational and Information Systems Laboratory, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. We thank the AMPERE team and the AMPERE Science Center for providing the Iridium derived data products. All model output, simulation codes, and analysis routines are being preserved on the NCAR High-Performance Storage System and will be made available upon written request to the lead author of this publication. (NNX14AI13G - NASA; NNX13AF92G - NASA; NNX16AB80G - NASA; National Science Foundation; ACI-1053575 - National Science Foundation
Large-scale Magnetic Structure Formation in 3D-MHD Turbulence
The inverse cascade of magnetic helicity in 3D-MHD turbulence is believed to
be one of the processes responsible for large scale magnetic structure
formation in astrophysical systems. In this work we present an exhaustive set
of high resolution direct numerical simulations (DNS) of both forced and
decaying 3D-MHD turbulence, to understand this structure formation process. It
is first shown that an inverse cascade of magnetic helicity in small-scale
driven turbulence does not necessarily generate coherent large-scale magnetic
structures. The observed large-scale magnetic field, in this case, is severely
perturbed by magnetic fluctuations generated by the small-scale forcing. In the
decaying case, coherent large-scale structure form similar to those observed
astronomically. Based on the numerical results the formation of large-scale
magnetic structures in some astrophysical systems, is suggested to be the
consequence of an initial forcing which imparts the necessary turbulent energy
into the system, which, after the forcing shuts off, decays to form the
large-scale structures. This idea is supported by representative examples e.g.
cluster of galaxies.Comment: 21 pages in emulateapj format. 29 figures and 1 table. Accepted for
publication in APJ on 11/09/201
Toward a first-principles integrated simulation of tokamak edge plasmas
Performance of the ITER is anticipated to be highly sensitive to the edge plasma condition. The edge pedestal in ITER needs to be predicted from an integrated simulation of the necessary first-principles, multi-scale physics codes. The mission of the SciDAC Fusion Simulation Project (FSP) Prototype Center for Plasma Edge Simulation (CPES) is to deliver such a code integration framework by (1) building new kinetic codes XGC0 and XGC1, which can simulate the edge pedestal buildup; (2) using and improving the existing MHD codes ELITE, M3D-OMP, M3D-MPP and NIMROD, for study of large-scale edge instabilities called Edge Localized Modes (ELMs); and (3) integrating the codes into a framework using cutting-edge computer science technology. Collaborative effort among physics, computer science, and applied mathematics within CPES has created the first working version of the End-to-end Framework for Fusion Integrated Simulation (EFFIS), which can be used to study the pedestal-ELM cycles
Controlling turbulent drag across electrolytes using electric fields
Reversible in operando control of friction is an unsolved challenge crucial
to industrial tribology. Recent studies show that at low sliding velocities,
this control can be achieved by applying an electric field across electrolyte
lubricants. However, the phenomenology at high sliding velocities is yet
unknown. In this paper, we investigate the hydrodynamic friction across
electrolytes under shear beyond the transition to turbulence. We develop a
novel, highly parallelised, numerical method for solving the coupled
Navier-Stokes Poisson-Nernest-Planck equation. Our results show that turbulent
drag cannot be controlled across dilute electrolyte using static electric
fields alone. The limitations of the Poisson-Nernst-Planck formalism hints at
ways in which turbulent drag could be controlled using electric fields.Comment: Accepted by the Faraday Discussions on Chemical Physics of
Electroactive Material
Zonal flow generation by modulational instability
This paper gives a pedagogic review of the envelope formalism for excitation
of zonal flows by nonlinear interactions of plasma drift waves or Rossby waves,
described equivalently by the Hasegawa-Mima (HM) equation or the
quasigeostrophic barotropic potential vorticity equation, respectively. In the
plasma case a modified form of the HM equation, which takes into account
suppression of the magnetic-surface-averaged electron density response by a
small amount of rotational transform, is also analyzed. Excitation of zonal
mean flow by a modulated wave train is particularly strong in the modified HM
case. A local dispersion relation for a coherent wave train is calculated by
linearizing about a background mean flow and used to find the nonlinear
frequency shift by inserting the nonlinearly excited mean flow. Using the
generic nonlinear Schroedinger equation about a uniform carrier wave, the
criterion for instability of small modulations of the wave train is found, as
is the maximum growth rate and phase velocity of the modulations and zonal
flows, in both the modified and unmodified cases.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the CSIRO/COSNet
Workshop on Turbulence and Coherent Structures, Canberra, Australia, 10-13
January 2006 (World Scientific, in preparation, eds. J.P. Denier and J.S.
Frederiksen): 15 pages, 2 figures (3 figure files) - resubmitted to correct
one-line overflow onto page 1
The Turbulent Warm Ionized Medium: Emission Measure Distribution and MHD Simulations
We present an analysis of the distribution of H-alpha emission measures for
the warm ionized medium (WIM) of the Galaxy using data from the Wisconsin
H-Alpha Mapper (WHAM) Northern Sky Survey. Our sample is restricted to Galactic
latitudes |b| > 10. We removed sightlines intersecting nineteen high-latititude
classical H II regions, leaving only sightlines that sample the diffuse WIM.
The distribution of EM sin |b| for the full sample is poorly characterized by a
single normal distribution, but is extraordinarily well fit by a lognormal
distribution, with = 0.146 +/- 0.001 and standard deviation
0.190 +/- 0.001. drops from 0.260 +/- 0.002 at Galactic
latitude 10<|b|<30 to 0.038 +/- 0.002 at Galactic latitude 60<|b|<90. The
distribution may widen slightly at low Galactic latitude. We compare the
observed EM distribution function to the predictions of three-dimensional
magnetohydrodynamic simulations of isothermal turbulence within a
non-stratified interstellar medium. We find that the distribution of EM sin |b|
is well described by models of mildy supersonic turbulence with a sonic Mach
number of ~1.4-2.4. The distribution is weakly sensitive to the magnetic field
strength. The model also successfully predicts the distribution of dispersion
measures of pulsars and H-alpha line profiles. In the best fitting model, the
turbulent WIM occupies a vertical path length of 400-500 pc within the 1.0-1.8
kpc scale height of the layer. The WIM gas has a lognormal distribution of
densities with a most probable electron density n_{pk} = 0.03 cm^{-3}. We also
discuss the implications of these results for interpreting the filling factor,
the power requirement, and the magnetic field of the WIM.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, ApJ in press. Replacement reflects version
accepted for publicatio
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