SPRG Seminars
September 17, 2013:
"Virtual detections of O+ at Mars compared with MEX using a test particle simulation"
Shannon Curry, Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California at Berkeley
As part of the 2013 ISSI proposal "The induced magnetosphere of Mars: Physical Processes and Consequences", this study focuses on using a test particle simulation to examine the kinetic aspects of the solar wind interaction with Mars' induced magnetosphere. The Mars Test Particle (MTP) simulation is used to create virtual detections of O+, O2+ and CO2+ pick up ions based on MEX orbital configurations in the Mars space environment. These planetary pick-up ions are formed when the solar wind directly interacts with the neutral atmosphere, causing the ions to be accelerated by the background convective electric field. The subsequent ion escape is the subject of great interest, specifically with respect to which species dominates ion loss from Mars and how ion escape changes during the solar cycle. This body of work will examine pick-up ions by simulating energy time spectrograms from specific MEX orbits (see below) when Mars was located behind Earth along the Parker spiral in the solar wind. Using individual particle traces, the origin and trajectories of the different ion populations can be analyzed and compared in order to assess how they contribute to the total escape rate. Additionally, we present results for solar minimum and maximum conditions with respect to ion fluxes and energies in order to robustly describe the physical processes controlling planetary ion distributions and atmospheric escape.