Comparative Study on Planetary Magnetosphere in the Solar System

The magnetospheric responses to solar wind of Mercury, Earth, Jupiter and Uranus are compared via magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations. The tilt angle of each planetary field and the polarity of solar wind are also considered. Magnetic reconnection is illustrated and explicated with the interaction between the magnetic field distributions of the solar wind and the magnetosphere.

Stellar wind - magnetosphere interactions in hot Jupiters

One potential star-planet interaction mechanism for hot Jupiters involves planetary heating via currents set up by interactions between the stellar wind and planetary magnetosphere. Early modeling results indicate that such currents, which are analogous to the terrestrial global electric circuit (GEC), have the potential to provide sufficient heating to account for the additional radius inflation seen in some hot Jupiters. Here we present a more detailed model of this phenomenon, exploring the scale of the effect, the circumstances under which it is likely to be significant, implications for the planetary magnetospheric structure, and observational signatures.