# Particle-in-Cell Simulations of Plasma Dynamics in Cometary Environment

## TL;DR

This paper uses advanced Particle-in-Cell simulations to study plasma interactions around comets, revealing kinetic effects such as bow shock formation and particle reflection, with a new outgassing modeling method implemented.

## Contribution

Introduces a novel numerical method in iPIC3D to simulate cometary outgassing within a fully kinetic PIC framework, enabling detailed plasma kinetic analysis.

## Key findings

- Bow shock forms due to solar wind interaction
- Ions are reflected at the bow shock
- Electrons are heated in the interaction region

## Abstract

We perform and analyze global Particle-in-Cell (PIC) simulations of the interaction between solar wind and an outgassing comet with the goal of studying the plasma kinetic dynamics of a cometary environment. To achieve this, we design and implement a new numerical method in the iPIC3D code to model outgassing from the comet: new plasma particles are ejected from the comet "surface" at each computational cycle. Our simulations show that a bow shock is formed as a result of the interaction between solar wind and outgassed particles. The analysis of distribution functions for the PIC simulations shows that at the bow shock part of the incoming solar wind, ions are reflected while electrons are heated. This work attempts to reveal kinetic effects in the atmosphere of an outgassing comet using a fully kinetic Particle-in-Cell model.