March 13, 2009 - CCLDAS Particle-in-Cell Simulations of the Lunar Dusty Plasma Environment A. Poppe...
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Transcript of March 13, 2009 - CCLDAS Particle-in-Cell Simulations of the Lunar Dusty Plasma Environment A. Poppe...
March 13, 2009 - CCLDAS
Particle-in-Cell Simulations of the Lunar Dusty Plasma Environment
A. Poppe & M. Horányi
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics
Dept. of Physics, Univ. of Colorado at Boulder
March 13, 2009 - CCLDAS
Research Questions
• What are the properties of the lunar plasma environment due to photoelectron emission, exposure to solar wind, etc.?
• What are the required conditions for electrostatic dust charging, levitation and transport?
• How well do ongoing laboratory measurements reproduce the lunar environment?
March 13, 2009 - CCLDAS
Particle-in-Cell Code
• First model is 1-d, without dust particles– Goal is to characterize the properties of the
photoelectron sheath present on the dayside of the Moon
• Grard & Tunaley [1971] present analytical solutions to electron density, electric field and sheath thickness for three electron distributions
March 13, 2009 - CCLDAS
1-d PIC Results
• Define a more realistic photoelectron energy distribution (after Feuerbacher et al. 1972)
Emax = 6 eV
Eavg = 2.2 eV