When a weakly outgassing comet is sufficiently close to the Sun, the formation of an ionized coma results in solar wind mass loading and magnetic field draping around its nucleus. Using a 3D fully kinetic approach, we distill the components of a generalized Ohm's law and the effective electron equation of state directly from the self-consistently simulated electron dynamics and identify the driving physics in the various regions of the cometary plasma environment. Using the example of space plasmas, in particular multi-species cometary plasmas, we show how the description for the complex kinetic electron dynamics can be simplified through a simple effective closure, and identify where an isotropic single-electron fluid Ohm's law approximation can be used, and where it fails.Numerical models that seek to describe the evolution 1 of plasma without self-consistently including the electron 2 dynamics, such as (multi-)fluid and hybrid simulation 3 approaches [1], need to rely on a relation that prescribes 4 the behavior of the unresolved species. Typically a 5 generalized Ohm's law (GOL) is assumed [2], combined 6 with a closure relation such as a polytropic or a double 7 adiabatic evolution [3,4]. In this letter, we show how a 8 GOL can unravel the hidden mysteries of multi-species 9 plasma environments, such as the solar wind plasma 10 interaction with a weakly outgassing comet [5][6][7]. We 11 indicate where reduced plasma models can be applied, 12 e.g., to gain more direct access to the ongoing physics 13 and/or to decrease the needed amount of computational 14 resources, and show the consequences of this compromise. 15 * mailto: jandeca@gmail.com 16 The Rosetta spacecraft caught up with comet 17 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (hereafter 67P) at a 18 heliocentric distance of 3.6 AU [8, 9]. At a few hundreds 19 of kilometers from the cometary nucleus, the Rosetta 20 plasma instruments, quite unexpectedly, picked up 21 the signatures of a plasma environment dominated 22 the plasma density with distance from the nucleus [19, 20] 34 or, in other words, there exists a continuously changing 35 ratio between the cometary and the upstream solar wind 36 plasma density throughout 67P's plasma environment, 37 both along the Sun-comet direction as well as in the 38 meridian plane [21-23]. To first order, for a weakly 39 outgassing comet, the dynamical interaction that de-40 termines the general structure of the cometary plasma 41 environment is representative of a four-fluid coupled 42 system (illustrated in Fig. 1), where the solar wind 43 electrons move to neutralize the cometary ions and the 44 cometary electrons organize themselves to neutralize the 45 solar wind ions [7]. 46 47 In addition to a detailed understanding of the kinetic 48 dynamics that governs the solar wind interaction with 49 a weakly outgassing comet, in this letter we provide 50 feedback to (multi-)fluid [24-29] and hybrid [16, 30-37] 51 models where the electrons dynamics is prescribed 52 through a GOL combined with an electron closure 53 relation. Using a f...

In this article, discrete variants of several results from vector calculus are studied for classical finite difference summation by parts operators in two and three space dimensions. It is shown that existence theorems for scalar/vector potentials of irrotational/solenoidal vector fields cannot hold discretely because of grid oscillations, which are characterised explicitly. This results in a non-vanishing remainder associated to grid oscillations in the discrete Helmholtz Hodge decomposition. Nevertheless, iterative numerical methods based on an interpretation of the Helmholtz Hodge decomposition via orthogonal projections are proposed and applied successfully.In numerical experiments, the discrete remainder vanishes and the potentials converge with the same order of accuracy as usual in other first order partial differential equations. Motivated by the successful application of the Helmholtz Hodge decomposition in theoretical plasma physics, applications to the discrete analysis of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) wave modes are presented and discussed.

Context. The Rosetta Plasma Consortium (RPC) magnetometer (MAG) data during the tail excursion in March–April 2016 are used to investigate the magnetic structure of and activity in the tail region of the weakly outgassing comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (67P). Aims. The goal of this study is to compare the large scale (near) tail structure with that of earlier missions to strong outgassing comets, and the small scale turbulent energy cascade (un)related to the singing comet phenomenon. Methods. The usual methods of space plasma physics are used to analyse the magnetometer data, such as minimum variance analysis, spectral analysis, and power law fitting. Also the cone angle and clock angle of the magnetic field are calculated to interpret the data. Results. It is found that comet 67P does not have a classical draped magnetic field and no bi-lobal tail structure at this late stage of the mission when the comet is already at 2.7 AU distance from the Sun. The main magnetic field direction seems to be more across the tail direction, which may implicate an asymmetric pick-up cloud. During periods of singing comet activity the propagation direction of the waves is at large angles with respect to the magnetic field and to the radial direction towards the comet. Turbulent cascade of magnetic energy from large to small scales is different in the presence of singing as without it.

Abstract. We present a statistical survey of large amplitude, asymmetric plasma, and magnetic field enhancements at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from December 2014 to June 2016. The aim is to provide a general overview of these structures' properties over the mission duration. At comets, nonlinear wave evolution plays an integral part in the development of turbulence and in particular facilitates the transfer of energy and momentum. As the first mission of its kind, the ESA Rosetta mission was able to study the plasma properties of the inner coma for a prolonged time and during different stages of activity. This enables us to study the temporal evolution of steepened waves and their characteristics. In total, we identified ~70000 events in the magnetic field data by means of machine learning. We observe that the occurrence of wave events is linked to the activity of the comet, where events are primarily observed at high outgassing rates. No clear indications of a relationship between the occurrence rate and solar wind conditions were found. The waves are found to propagate predominantly perpendicular to the background magnetic field, which indicates their compressive nature. Characteristics like amplitude, skewness, and width of the waves were extracted by fitting a skew normal distribution to the magnetic field magnitude of individual events. With increasing massloading the average amplitude of steepened waves decreases while the skewness increases. Using a modified 1D MHD model it was possible to show that such solitary structures can be described by the combination of nonlinear, dispersive, and dissipative effects. By combining the model with observations of amplitude, width, and skewness we obtain an estimate of the effective plasma viscosity in the comet-solar wind interaction region. At 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko steepened waves are of particular importance as they dominate the innermost interaction region for intermediate to high activity.

Abstract. We present a statistical survey of large-amplitude, asymmetric plasma and magnetic field enhancements detected outside the diamagnetic cavity at comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko from December 2014 to June 2016. Based on the concurrent observations of plasma and magnetic field enhancements, we interpret them to be magnetosonic waves. The aim is to provide a general overview of these waves' properties over the mission duration. As the first mission of its kind, the ESA Rosetta mission was able to study the plasma properties of the inner coma for a prolonged time and during different stages of activity. This enables us to study the temporal evolution of these waves and their characteristics. In total, we identified ∼ 70 000 steepened waves in the magnetic field data by means of machine learning. We observe that the occurrence of these steepened waves is linked to the activity of the comet, where steepened waves are primarily observed at high outgassing rates. No clear indications of a relationship between the occurrence rate and solar wind conditions were found. The waves are found to propagate predominantly perpendicular to the background magnetic field, which indicates their compressional nature. Characteristics like amplitude, skewness, and width of the waves were extracted by fitting a skew normal distribution to the magnetic field magnitude of individual steepened waves. With increasing mass loading, the average amplitude of the waves decreases, while the skewness increases. Using a modified 1D magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model, we investigated if the waves can be described by the combination of nonlinear and dissipative effects. By combining the model with observations of amplitude, width and skewness, we obtain an estimate of the effective plasma diffusivity in the comet–solar wind interaction region and compare it with suitable reference values as a consistency check. At 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, these steepened waves are of particular importance as they dominate the innermost interaction region for intermediate to high activity.