Abstract
During periods of strong magnetic activity, cold dense plasma from the
plasmasphere typically forms a plume extending towards the dayside
magnetopause, eventually reaching it. In this work, we present a
large-scale two-dimensional fully kinetic Particle-In-Cell simulation of
a reconnecting magnetopause hit by a propagating plasmaspheric plume. We
observe three main phases: before the plume arrives at the magnetopause,
a transient phase where the system reshapes because of the new inflow
conditions, and the full interaction when the plume is well engulfed in
the reconnection site. We show the evolution of the magnetopause’s
dynamics subjected to the modification of the inflowing plasma. Our main
result is that the change in the plasma temperature (cold protons in the
plume) have no effects on the magnetic reconnection rate, which on
average depends only on the inflowing magnetic field and total ion
density, before, during and after the impact.