Numerical study of the dynamics of ionospheric plasma in quiet and disturbed conditions

Ishanov S. A., Kashchenko N. M., Zubkov E. V., Savkin D. A., Khudenko V. N.

A method for numerical simulation of non-stationary equations of the dynamics of the ionosphere-plasmasphere system in geomagnetic plasma tubes of arbitrary size is presented. The mathematical model is based on the quasi-hydrodynamic description of plasma and considers the dynamics of the ionospheric-plasmospheric exchange, the processes of chemical kinetics, considering impact ionization by energetic magnetospheric ions, heat transfer in the ionospheric plasma, the diffusion of electron-ionic gas, considering the neutral wind, the transfer and thermalization of superthermal electrons. Based on the results of numerical modeling of processes in the near-Earth space plasma under various heliogeophysical conditions, the spatiotemporal distributions of the key macroscopic parameters (density, velocities, and temperatures) of the ionospheric-magnetospheric plasma have been obtained and analyzed.

Keywords:hydrodynamics, numerical simulation, computational experiment, ionosphere, plasmasphere, numerical methods, evolution of disturbances.