Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2016

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Poster

Symbol P (Space and Planetary Sciences) » P-EM Solar-Terrestrial Sciences, Space Electromagnetism & Space Environment

[P-EM17] Space Plasma Physics: Theory and Simulation

Tue. May 24, 2016 5:15 PM - 6:30 PM Poster Hall (International Exhibition Hall HALL6)

Convener:*Takayuki Umeda(Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research, Nagoya University), Takanobu Amano(Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of Tokyo), Yasuhiro Nariyuki(Faculty of Human Development, University of Toyama), Tadas Nakamura(Fukui Prefectural University), Tooru Sugiyama(Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology Center for Earth Information Science and Technology)

5:15 PM - 6:30 PM

[PEM17-P06] Vlasov simulation of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability

*Yasutaka Wada1, Takayuki Umeda1, Shinobu Machida1 (1.Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research)

Keywords:Space Plasma, Rayleigh-Taylor instability, Vlasov simulation

The Rayleigh-Taylor instability (RTI) develops at an interface between two fluids with different densities when an external force is applied from a heavy fluid to a light fluid. The RTI is seen as a secondary instability of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability taking place at the magnetopause. The spatial scale of the secondary RTI is on the ion inertial scale or ion gyro scale where non-MHD effects are important. In the previous studies of ideal MHD simulations, the RTI develops symmetrically in the horizontal axis. On the other hand, previous hall-MHD and Finite-Larmor-Radius (FLR)-MHD simulations have shown that the RTI develops asymmetrically in the horizontal axis. In this study, basic processes of non-MHD scale RTI are of interest. We perform four-dimensional Vlasov simulations of the RTI with two spatial dimensions and two velocity dimensions. We vary the ratio of the ion inertial length and/or the ion gyro radius to the spatial scale of the density gradient layer, and discuss the effect of the non-MHD effects on the linear growth and nonlinear development of the RTI.