Abstract
It is generally accepted that modeling Farley-Buneman instabilities
require resolving ion Landau damping to reproduce experimentally
observed nonlinear features. Particle in cell (PIC) simulations have
been able to reproduce most of these, but at a computational cost that
severely affects its scalability. This limitation hinders the study of
non-local phenomena that require three dimensions or coupling with
larger-scale processes. We argue that a form of the five-moment fluid
system can recreate several aspects of Farley-Buneman dynamics such as
density and phase speed saturation, wave turning, and heating. A
comparison between the proposed fluid and a kinetic model shows good
qualitative agreement.