Browsing by Author "Luttikhuis, Thijs"

One of the most noticeable effects of solar–terrestrial physics is the aurora which regularly appears in the polar regions. This polar light is the result of the excitation of atmospheric species by charged particles originating from the solar wind and magnetosphere that enter the Earth’s atmosphere, which are called precipitating particles. We present the first results on auroral proton precipitation into the ionosphere using a global 3-dimensional simulation of near-Earth space plasma with the Vlasiator hybrid-Vlasov model, driven with a southward interplanetary magnetic field and steady solar wind parameters. The hybrid-Vlasov approach describes ions through their velocity distribution function in phase space (3-dimensional ordinary space and 3-dimensional velocity space), while electrons are represented by a massless charge-neutralizing fluid. Vlasiator is a global model describing the whole region of near-Earth space including the Earth’s magnetosphere (whole dayside and part of the magnetotail), the magnetosheath, as well as the foreshock region and some solar wind. The precipitating proton differential number fluxes for this run are determined from the proton phase-space density contained within the bounce loss-cone, which is set at a constant angle of 10 degrees everywhere. To determine the precipitation of particles at ionospheric altitudes (in this case a height of 110 km above the Earth’s surface), we trace magnetic field lines from the ionosphere to the inner boundary of the Vlasiator domain using the Tsyganenko model. With this, we obtain a magnetic local time–geomagnetic latitude map of differential number flux of precipitating protons in 9 energy bins between 0.5 and 50 keV. From the differential number flux, proton integral energy fluxes and mean energies can be obtained. The integral energy fluxes in the Vlasiator run are then compared to data of the Precipitation Electron/Proton Spectrometer (SSJ) instrument of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) for several satellite overpasses during events with similar solar wind conditions as in the Vlasiator run. The SSJ instrument bins proton energies between 0.03 and 30 keV. Typical values of the total integral energy flux are between 5 · 10^6 and 5 · 10^7 keV cm−2 s−1 sr−1 in the cusp and between 1 · 10^6 and 3 · 10^7 keV cm−2 s−1 sr−1 in the evening sector for both Vlasiator and DMSP, although DMSP fluxes can locally be up to an order of magnitude higher. Additionally, global precipitation patterns in Vlasiator are compared to Ovation Prime, which is an empirical model based on data from DMSP which can be used to forecast precipitation of auroral electrons and protons. Although Ovation Prime shows a much wider cusp region compared to Vlasiator, both show similar maximum integral energy fluxes around 1 to 2 · 10^7 keV cm−2 s−1 sr−1 in the cusp region, and between 3 · 10^6 and 5 · 10^7 keV cm−2 s−1 sr−1 in the nightside oval.