This research program will utilize a kinetic particle code to analyze the processes involved with plasma transport at the Earth's magnetopause. Full particle simulations will be used to study the fundamental processes involved in collisionless reconnection. Hybrid particle/fluid simulations will then be performed to determine the large scale consequences of magnetopause reconnection. Of particular interest in these simulations is the fact that they will use multiple ion species, which can lead to the excitation of Kelvin-Helmholz waves and bursty reconnection. Bursty reconnection results in the formation of Flux Transfer Events, which have been observed many times in satellite data, but have yet to be satisfactorily explained.
