Electron and Ion Dynamics of the Solar Wind Interaction with a Weakly Outgassing Comet

Jan Deca (1, 2) , Andrey Divin (3, 4) , Pierre Henri (5) , Anders Eriksson (4) , Stefano Markidis (6) , Vyacheslav Olshevsky (7) , Mihaly Horanyi (2)

1 IMPACT - Institute for Modeling Plasma, Atmospheres and Cosmic Dust
2 LASP - Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics [Boulder]
3 NIF - V.A. Fock Institute of Physics
4 IRF - Swedish Institute of Space Physics [Uppsala]
5 LPC2E - Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie de l'Environnement et de l'Espace
6 KTH - Royal Institute of Technology [Stockholm]
7 KU Leuven - Catholic University of Leuven - Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Using a 3D fully kinetic approach, we disentangle and explain the ion and electron dynamics of the solar wind interaction with a weakly outgassing comet. We show that, to first order, the dynamical interaction is representative of a four-fluid coupled system. We self-consistently simulate and identify the origin of the warm and suprathermal electron distributions observed by ESA’s Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and conclude that a detailed kinetic treatment of the electron dynamics is critical to fully capture the complex physics of mass-loading plasmas.

Domains: Space Physics [physics.space-ph]; Astrophysics [astro-ph]

Jan Deca, Andrey Divin, Pierre Henri, Anders Eriksson, Stefano Markidis, et al.. Electron and Ion Dynamics of the Solar Wind Interaction with a Weakly Outgassing Comet. Physical Review Letters, 2017, 118 (20), pp.205101. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.205101⟩. ⟨insu-01541244⟩