MHD waves, reconnection, and plasma transport at the dayside magnetopause

The magnetic field of the Earth creates a huge cavity in the solar wind known as the magnetosphere. The transition region between the solar wind plasma and magnetosphere plasma is of substantial interest because many magnetospheric processes are governed by the transport of particles, momentum and energy across that boundary. At this boundary, the magnetopause, there is an abrupt decrease in plasma bulk flow, density and pressure, and large increase in temperature and magnetic field. Throughout this region the plasmas is large. Large amplitude compressional waves are nearly always found in the region just outside of the magnetopause. These waves are either intrinsic solar wind fluctuations or they may be global mirror modes which are generated in a localized region of large pressure anisotropy just outside the magnetopause. The substantial background gradients observed at the magnetopause strongly couple the compressional waves with kinetic Alfven waves near the Alfven resonance location, leading to substantial particle transport. Moreover, for a sheared background magnetic field, as is found at times of southward interplanetary magnetic field, the mode converted kinetic Alfven waves can propagate to the location where kparallel = 0 and generate islands in phase space. We present a solution of the kinetic-MHD wave equations for the magnetic field structure based on a realistic steady state profile which includes: a sheared magnetic field; magnetic curvature; and gradients in the background density, pressure and magnetic field. We incorporate wave-particle resonance interactions for electrons and ions to obtain the dissipation. The background magnetic Keld curvature and gradient give rise to drifts which alter the resonance condition for the various particle species (ω - k circ Vd - kparallelvparallel) and reduces the Landau damping of the kinetic Alfven wave, allowing it to propagate to the kparallel = 0 location