HR: 09:45h
AN: SH11B-06    [Abstracts]
TI: Propagation and motion of bubbles in the geomagnetotail
AU: * Wang, Y
EM: ywang@lanl.gov
AF: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Box 1663, MS D466, Los Alamos, NM 87545 United States
AU: Birn, J
EM: jbirn@lanl.gov
AF: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Box 1663, MS D466, Los Alamos, NM 87545 United States
AU: Raeder, J
EM: j.raeder@unh.edu
AF: University of New Hampshire, Space Science Center 245G Morse Hall 39 College Road, Durham, NH 03824 United States
AU: Hesse, M
EM: michael.hesse@nasa.gov
AF: Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 696, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AB: Entropy-depleted magnetic flux tubes (bubbles) have been observed not only in the Earth's magnetosphere, but also in the magnetospheres of other planets, including Jupiter and Saturn. The motion and evolution of the bubbles are believed to play a crucial role for the global magnetosphere convection of these systems. Birn et al. [2004] studied the propagation of a bubble in the magnetotail and provided a global picture of bubble evolution and dynamics after it is generated. Based on their study, we make further investigations of the motion and dynamic evolution of bubbles in the magnetotail using parallelized and refined 3D MHD simulation model. This new model helps us to achieve a much higher resolution than the previous study, which allows a better exploration of the bubble structures and their evolution. We give a description of detailed 3D bubble structures at different phases of bubble evolution, and find complex patterns across and along the bubble. A detailed force analysis shows that difference MHD forces play different roles at different locations and evolution phases of the bubble, which explains the formation of the special bubble structures. Detailed current structures in the bubble and along the bubble surface are studied and 3D field line geometry is shown to help understand the evolution of the bubble. We further analyze the interactions between the bubble and its surroundings and make comparisons between our results and those from previous studies.
DE: 2731 Magnetosphere--outer
DE: 2740 Magnetospheric configuration and dynamics
DE: 2744 Magnetotail
DE: 2753 Numerical modeling
SC: SPA-Solar and Heliospheric Physics [SH]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly