ROSES ID: NNH21ZDA001N-LWSSC Selection Year: 2021
Program Element: Strategic Capability
Principal Investigator: John Charles Dorelli
Affiliation(s): NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Project Member(s):
Shuster, Jason Co-I University of Maryland, College Park
Wendel, Deirdre E Co-I NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Gallardo-Lacourt, Bea Co-I null
Khazanov, George V Co-I NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Bard, Chris Co-I NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Bessho, Naoki Co-I University of Maryland, College Park
Buzulukova, Natalia Co-I University of Maryland, College Park
Oliveira, Denny M Co-I University of Maryland Baltimore County
Zesta, Eftyhia Co-I NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Summary:
Understanding the connection between magnetospheric dynamics and the aurora has remained one of the most challenging problems in magnetospheric physics for the last fifty years. One of the more exciting developments in the last two decades was the discovery that dispersive Alfv n waves (DAW) play a significant role (comparable to quasi-static potentials) in accelerating magnetospheric electrons to energies capable of generating auroral arcs during periods of high auroral activity. DAW have also been invoked to directly connect collisionless reconnection physics to the aurora, with important implications for the relative timing between magnetotail reconnection onset and auroral substorm onset. Unfortunately, there does not exist a global magnetosphere code capable of modeling the physics of reconnection generated DAW and their coupling to the ionosphere. We propose to address this significant gap in our modeling capability by developing a new "collisionless Hall MHD" model in which frozen-in perpendicular ExB electron motion is self-consistently coupled to non-local electron and ion transport parallel to the magnetic field. The new computational model, MARBLE (Magnetosphere Aurora Reconnection Boundary Layer Emulator), will be designed to couple to an existing global Hall MHD code for the magnetosphere as well as a Fokker-Planck model for electron precipitation into the ionosphere. The new model will be capable of addressing the following science questions: