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Ionospheric outflow and cross polar cap potential: What is the role of magnetospheric inflation?

Reductions of the ionospheric cross polar cap potential in magnetohydrodynamic models that include polar wind‐like heavy ion outflow have become a ubiquitous observation in recent studies. The underlying mechanisms for these reductions, which are not to be confused with the problem of potential saturation, remain in question. A possible explanation is that such outflow inflates the magnetosphere, creating a blunter obstacle to the solar wind and reducing the upstream geoeffective length. Such an explanation is attractive because it describes the outflow‐related potential drop in clear, model‐independent terms. This study uses three separate magnetohydrodynamic simulations to test this hypothesis: one coupled to a polar wind outflow model, one coupled to an inner magnetosphere code in order to reproduce the effect without explicit outflow, and a stand‐alone baseline simulation. It is found that this hypothesis cannot explain the total reduction. Results suggest that other mechanisms, such as a change to the dayside reconnection rate, may be important, but further investigation is required.