All whistlers are not created equally: Scattering of strahl electrons in the solar wind via particle-in-cell simulations

Details All whistlers are not created equally: Scattering of strahl electrons in the solar wind via particle-in-cell simulations All whistlers are not created equally: Scattering of strahl electrons in the solar wind via particle-in-cell simulations

Jan 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007georl..3401102s&link_type=abstract

Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 34, Issue 1, CiteID L01102

Physics

Plasma Physics

9

Interplanetary Physics: Plasma Waves And Turbulence, Interplanetary Physics: Solar Wind Plasma, Space Plasma Physics: Kinetic Waves And Instabilities, Space Plasma Physics: Nonlinear Phenomena (4400, 6944), Space Plasma Physics: Wave/Particle Interactions (2483, 6984)

Scientific paper

Solar wind observations show that suprathermal electrons (70 eV $\lesssim$ Energy $\lesssim$ 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; 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 the whistler anisotropy instability is excited via the initial application of T $\perp$ /T $\parallel$ > 1 to the electron core component, the resulting electron scattering leads to strahl pitch-angle distributions which decrease in width as electron energy increases. In contrast, 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.

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