Fluid simulations of Farley-Buneman instabilities: Model description and applications

It is generally accepted that modeling Farley-Buneman instabilities require resolving ion Landau damping to reproduce experimentally observed nonlinear features. Particle in cell (PIC) simulations have reproduced most of these at a computational cost that severely affects their scalability. This limitation hinders the study of non-local phenomena that require three dimensions or coupling with larger-scale processes. We argue that a variation of the five-moment fluid system can recreate several aspects of Farley-Buneman dynamics, such as density and phase speed saturation, wave turning, and heating. Furthermore, we show that this model offers an excellent qualitative agreement with a kinetic solver. Finally, we will outline some of the applications of this new approach for studying the coupling with larger-scale phenomena such as gradient drift instabilities, improving our interpretation of coherent backscatter from E-region irregularities, and refining conductivity estimates of Global Circulation Models.