Solar minimum exospheric neutral density near the subsolar magnetopause
estimated from the XMM soft X-ray observations on 12 Nov 2008
Abstract
The Earth’s magnetosheath and cusps emit soft X-rays due to the
interaction between highly charged solar wind ions and exospheric
hydrogen atoms. The LEXI and SMILE missions are scheduled to image the
Earth’s dayside magnetosphere system in soft X-rays and thus to
investigate global-scale magnetopause reconnection modes under varying
solar wind conditions. The exospheric neutral hydrogen density
distribution is an important consideration in the calculation of X-ray
emissivities. The value of this density at the subsolar magnetopause is
of particular interest for understanding X-ray emissions near this
boundary, and is used as a comparison between competing models of
hydrogen distribution. This paper estimates the exospheric density
during solar minimum by using X-ray Multimirror Mission (XMM)
astrophysics observations. We searched 11 years of XMM soft X-ray data
and provided a list of 193 events with a possible detection of X-rays of
magnetospheric origin. These events occurred during relatively constant
solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field conditions. During these
events the location of the magnetopause was measured in-situ by
heliospheric missions. Thus the location of the solar wind ions
responsible for the magnetospheric emission are well constrained by
observation. We detected one particular event on 12-Nov-2008 and and
estimated an exospheric density using the Open Geospace Global
Circulation Model and a spherically symmetric exosphere model. The
OpenGGCM magnetosheath parameters were used to disentangle soft X-rays
of exospheric origin from the XMM signal. The lower limit of the
exospheric density of this solar minimum event is 36.8 cm$^{-3}$
at 10 $R_E$ subsolar location.