Whistler Scattering of Suprathermal Electrons in the Solar Wind: ACE Observations

Details Whistler Scattering of Suprathermal Electrons in the Solar Wind: ACE Observations Whistler Scattering of Suprathermal Electrons in the Solar Wind: ACE Observations

Dec 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005agufmsh33b0375p&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2005, abstract #SH33B-0375

Physics

2159 Plasma Waves And Turbulence, 2164 Solar Wind Plasma, 7829 Kinetic Waves And Instabilities, 7867 Wave/Particle Interactions (2483, 6984)

Scientific paper

Suprathermal electrons in the solar wind have a strahl component with velocity distributions which often are very narrow in pitch-angle and are directed away from the Sun. Analysis of strahl distributions from 73.3 eV to 987 eV as measured by the SWEPAM plasma instrument on the ACE spacecraft are reported here. Although most previous observations show that the strahl pitch-angle width decreases with increasing energy, this presentation describes several events observed by ACE/SWEPAM at times of relatively enhanced magnetic fluctuations which show that this width increases as strahl energy increases. This presentation offers the hypothesis that this characteristic is due to strahl scattering by background whistler fluctuations. To test this hypothesis, second-order Vlasov theory calculations are presented which show that the whistler-strahl scattering rate should increase with increasing electron energy if magnetic power spectra are sufficiently steep functions of wavenumber and strahl energy distributions are sufficiently hard in energies parallel to the background magnetic field. ACE/SWEPAM measurements exhibit relatively hard strahl distributions, providing support to the whistler scattering hypothesis.

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