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Kinetic Simulations of Electron Acceleration at Mercury

  • Chapter
Magnetic Fields in the Solar System

Part of the book series: Astrophysics and Space Science Library ((ASSL,volume 448))

Abstract

In preparation of the ESA-JAXA mission Bepi Colombo we reconsidered the electron acceleration near Mercury. We first reviewed the existing observations starting from NASA’s Mariner-10 (1974–1975). Some of them later were shown to be inaccurate. Recently NASA’s Messenger mission newly observed energetic electrons including bursts of energies up to 100–200 keV. This by far exceeds the electron energies in the upstream solar wind. The acceleration mechanisms are, however, still not well understood. We derive models of electron acceleration near Mercury by passing strong interplanetary shocks, by reconnection at the magnetopause and in the Hermean magnetotail. We obtained the resulting electron energies and spectra in the near-Mercury MHD- and kinetic plasma turbulence as well as due to electric field structures by means of test particle calculations and also by fully self-consistent kinetic two- and three-dimensional PIC-code simulations whose results and, therefore, the acceleration mechanisms should be verified by the coming ESA-JAXA Bepi-Colombo mission to Mercury.

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Acknowledgements

This work was possible only due to the support by the German Science Foundation “Schwerpunktprogramm Planetmag.” Jörg Büchner, Neeraj Jain, Patricio A. Muñoz also acknowledge their support by the Max-Planck-Princeton Center for Plasma Physics, Fabien Widmer and Neeraj Jain also their support by the German Science Foundation CRC 963 and Xiaowei Zhou the support by the Max-Planck-Society for a post-doc stipend.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, 37077, Göttingen, Germany

    Jörg Büchner, Patrick Kilian, Patricio A. Muñoz, Fabien Widmer & Neeraj Jain

  2. Centre for Space Research, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa

    Patrick Kilian & Felix Spanier

  3. Institut de Recherche sur la Fusion Magnétique, Cadarache, F-13108, Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France

    Fabien Widmer

  4. Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaowei Zhou

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  1. Jörg Büchner
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  2. Patrick Kilian
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  3. Patricio A. Muñoz
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  4. Felix Spanier
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  5. Fabien Widmer
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  6. Xiaowei Zhou
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  7. Neeraj Jain
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Correspondence to Jörg Büchner .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum GFZ, Potsdam, Germany

    Hermann Lühr

  2. Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Göttingen, Germany

    Johannes Wicht

  3. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Ludwig Maximilians Universität, München, Germany

    Stuart A. Gilder

  4. Institut für Mathematik, Universität Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany

    Matthias Holschneider

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Büchner, J. et al. (2018). Kinetic Simulations of Electron Acceleration at Mercury. In: Lühr, H., Wicht, J., Gilder, S.A., Holschneider, M. (eds) Magnetic Fields in the Solar System. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 448. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64292-5_8

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