Building a weakly outgassing comet from a generalized Ohm’s law
File(s)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
When a weakly outgassing comet is sufficiently close to the Sun, the formation of an ionized coma results in solar wind mass loading and magnetic field draping around its nucleus. Using a 3D fully kinetic approach, we distill the components of a generalized Ohm’s law and the effective electron equation of state directly from the self-consistently simulated electron dynamics and identify the driving physics in the various regions of the cometary plasma environment. Using the example of space plasmas, in particular multispecies cometary plasmas, we show how the description for the complex kinetic electron dynamics can be simplified through a simple effective closure, and identify where an isotropic single-electron fluid Ohm’s law approximation can be used, and where it fails.
Date Issued
2019-08-01
Date Acceptance
2019-06-13
Citation
Physical Review Letters, 123 (5), pp.055101-1-055101-7
ISSN
0031-9007
Publisher
American Physical Society (APS)
Start Page
055101-1
End Page
055101-7
Journal / Book Title
Physical Review Letters
Volume
123
Issue
5
Copyright Statement
© 2019 American Physical Society.
Sponsor
Imperial College Trust
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Identifier
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.055101
Grant Number
N/A
ST/K001051/1
ST/N000692/1
Subjects
02 Physical Sciences
General Physics
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
055101
Date Publish Online
2019-08-01