Oregon NASA Space Grant Consortium

This internship project would primarily focus on the generation of pick up ion energy distributions by species and location using time of flight (TOF) analysis of selected intervals of HPCA burst and survey data. As the project progresses, the intent is to convert the TOF data into a mass per charge energy distribution to more clearly investigate the spatial and energetic distributions of heavy element pick up ions. Due to the motion of the Sun relative to the interstellar medium, PUIs from various species are likely to exhibit spatial focusing cones at or near 1 AU. Observations of the helium focusing cone have been made and its spatial extent has been mapped. HPCA’s TOF measurements provide an avenue to use existing data to refine and predict the potential focusing cones of other heavy elements while providing insight into the energetics and spatial distribution of PUIs in and around Earth’s magnetosphere. Connected to the TOF data analysis is a theoretical modeling component of the pick-up ion composition of the Earth’s interplanetary environment. This model will be developed building off of the Warsaw Test Particle Model of Dr. Justyna Sokol and others. Initially Dr. Sokol’s code was run in Mathematica and updates are needed to improve processing time and refine the particle generation functions for 1 AU. The goal of this project is to develop a functional modeling code which adapts the WTPM to a Python coding environment and refines the necessary functions to improve predictive pick-up ion source functions to better map the distributions at 1 AU. Our modeling efforts have the following objectives: Objective 1: Develop and test computational models using inputs of neutral atom densities and local solar conditions (solar wind density, and velocity), to develop physically consistent physical models for the inner source, geocoronal, and interstellar H+ densities and compare with existing models. Objective 2: Use current insitu and remote observations to refine the models to more accurately reflect the observations made using MMS-HPCA and other observations Objective 3: Expand the developed IDL models to obtain density distribution predictions for heavier ions typical to interstellar PUI observations.