Dissipation range dynamics: Kinetic Alfvén waves and the importance of <formula alphabet="latin">β<italic>e</italic>

Details Dissipation range dynamics: Kinetic Alfvén waves and the importance of <formula alphabet="latin">β<italic>e</italic> Dissipation range dynamics: Kinetic Alfvén waves and the importance of <formula alphabet="latin">β<italic>e</italic>

Oct 1999

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1999jgr...10422331l&link_type=abstract

Journal of Geophysical Research, Volume 104, Issue A10, p. 22331-22344

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

120

Solar Physics, Astrophysics, And Astronomy

Scientific paper

In a previous paper we argued that the damping of obliquely propagating kinetic Alfvén waves, chiefly by resonant mechanisms, was a likely explanation for the formation of the dissipation range for interplanetary magnetic field fluctuations. This suggestion was based largely on observations of the dissipation range at 1 AU as recorded by the Wind spacecraft. We pursue this suggestion here with both a general examination of the damping of obliquely propagating kinetic Alfvén waves and an additional examination of the observations. We explore the damping rates of kinetic Alfvén waves under a wide range of interplanetary conditions using numerical solutions of the linearized Maxwell-Vlasov equations and demonstrate that these waves display the nearly isotropic dissipation properties inferred from the previous paper. Using these solutions, we present a simple model to predict the onset of the dissipation range and compare these predictions to the observations. In the process we demonstrate that electron Landau damping plays a significant role in the damping of interplanetary magnetic field fluctuations which leads to significant heating of the thermal electrons.

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