Physics – Plasma Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufmsh41b1798m&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #SH41B-1798
Physics
Plasma Physics
[7827] Space Plasma Physics / Kinetic And Mhd Theory, [7829] Space Plasma Physics / Kinetic Waves And Instabilities, [7839] Space Plasma Physics / Nonlinear Phenomena
Scientific paper
The dissipation of fluctuations in the expanding solar wind produces a range of non-thermal ion and electron properties, including different velocities, temperatures, and temperature anisotropies for each particle species. These departures from a simple isothermal fluid are limited by kinetic microinstabilities, which generate fluctuations that reduce the anisotropy of the particle velocity distribution functions. In our prior work, we used data from the Faraday Cup instrument on the Wind spacecraft to show that the temperature anisotropies of solar wind protons and alpha-particles each appear to be bounded by the mirror and oblique firehose instabilities. Additionally, it was qualitatively demonstrated that both ion temperature and magnetic fluctuations are enhanced in plasma near instability thresholds. For the present work, we quantify these effects for the first time by deriving an instability growth rate for each Faraday Cup spectrum via a two-dimensional linear analysis of the Vlassov equation. This novel method, which combines theoretical and observational techniques, allows us to actually calculate the correlation between growth rate and both ion temperature and magnetic fluctuations. This provides us with new information about how kinetic microinstabilities redistribute energy in solar wind plasma as part of the heating processes that act thereon.
Gary Peter S.
Kasper Justin Christophe
Maruca Bennett A.
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