Mass loading at the magnetopause through the plasmaspheric plume

Abstract

An investigation of the transport of the plasmaspheric plasma to the dayside magnetopause under disturbed geomagnetic conditions associated with plasmaspheric plumes is conducted by numerical simulations using the Dynamic Fluid-Kinetic (DyFK) model. The simulations present the field-aligned density distributions and kinetic features of multiple ion species (H⁺/He⁺/O⁺) in a plasmaspheric flux tube that corotates while convecting toward the dayside magnetopause. The simulations show that the plasmaspheric plume can provide an equatorial magnetopause plasma density which is up to 3 orders of magnitude higher than that under the typical conditions. With the effects of wave-particle interaction included, such mass loading through the plasmaspheric plume is even stronger. The local reconnection rate at the location where the plasmaspheric plume mass loads at the dayside magnetopause may decrease by 90%, depending on the geomagnetic activities, the outer plasmaspheric density, and the level and spatial span of the wave-particle interaction.