All Whistlers are not Created Equally: Scattering of Suprathermal Electrons in the Solar Wind via Particle-in-Cell Simulations

Details All Whistlers are not Created Equally: Scattering of Suprathermal Electrons in the Solar Wind via Particle-in-Cell Simulations All Whistlers are not Created Equally: Scattering of Suprathermal Electrons in the Solar Wind via Particle-in-Cell Simulations

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufmsh13a0401s&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #SH13A-0401

Physics

2164 Solar Wind Plasma, 7829 Kinetic Waves And Instabilities, 7867 Wave/Particle Interactions (2483, 6984)

Scientific paper

Solar wind observations show that suprathermal electrons (100 eV < Energy < 1 keV) of the magnetic-field-aligned "strahl" component have broader pitch-angle distributions than are predicted by adiabatic theories of solar wind expansion. Magnetosonic-whistler fluctuations propagating toward the Sun at k × B_o = 0 (where B_o is the background magnetic field) have a strong cyclotron resonance with suprathermal electrons propagating in the anti-Solar direction along B_o. This resonance enables strong pitch-angle scattering, typically leading to an increase in the perpendicular (to B_o) energies of these electrons; thus whistlers are a likely source of the observed strahl broadening. Particle-in-cell simulations in a magnetized, homogeneous, collisionless plasma of electrons and protons are used to study the response of a strahl-like electron component to whistler fluctuation spectra. If a power spectrum of whistler fluctuations proportional to k-3 is initially applied to the simulations, the resulting electron scattering leads to strahl pitch-angle distributions which increase in width as electron energy increases. In contrast, if the whistler anisotropy instability is excited via the initial application of T\perp/T∥ > 1 to the electron core component, the resulting electron scattering leads to strahl pitch-angle distributions which decrease in width as electron energy increases. Both types of strahl broadening are observed in the solar wind, so understanding the source of whistler fluctuations is important for understanding the diverse scattering processes affecting the strahl.

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