Modeling the Magnetospheric X-ray Emission from Solar Wind Charge Exchange with Verification from XMM-Newton Observations

An MHD-based model of terrestrial solar wind charge exchange (SWCX) is created and compared to 19 case study observations in the 0.50.7 keV emission band taken from the European Photon Imaging Cameras on board XMM-Newton. This model incorporates the Global Unified Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupling S...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Whittaker,Ian C, Sembay,Steve, Carter,Jennifer A, Read,Andrew M, Milan,Steve E, Palmroth,Minna
Format: Report
Language:English
Subjects:
asymmetry
Charge transfer
Emission
Gamma rays
Magnetopause and boundary layers
Magnetosheath
Neutral particles
Neutrinos
solar wind
Solar wind/magnetosphere interactions
x rays
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Summary:An MHD-based model of terrestrial solar wind charge exchange (SWCX) is created and compared to 19 case study observations in the 0.50.7 keV emission band taken from the European Photon Imaging Cameras on board XMM-Newton. This model incorporates the Global Unified Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupling Simulation-4 MHD code and produces an X-ray emission data cube from O7 and O8 emission lines around the Earth using in situ solar wind parameters as the model input. This study details the modeling process and shows that fixing the oxygen abundances to a constant value reduces the variance when comparing to the observations, at the cost of a small accuracy decrease in some cases. Using the ACE oxygen data returns a wide ranging accuracy, providing excellent correlation in a few cases and poor/anticorrelation in others. The sources of error for any user wishing to simulate terrestrial SWCX using an MHD model are described here and include mask position, hydrogen to oxygen ratio in the solar wind, and charge state abundances. A dawn-dusk asymmetry is also found, similar to the results of empirical modeling. Using constant oxygen parameters, magnitudes approximately double that of the observed count rates are returned. A high accuracy is determined between the model and observations when comparing the count rate difference between enhanced SWCX and quiescent periods. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics , 21, 5, 01 Jan 0001, 01 Jan 0001, Open Access: Publishers Version. May be placed on public websites; Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.