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Scaling of the Electron Dissipation Range of Solar Wind Turbulence
Belmont, G.; Sahraoui, F.; Huang, S. Y. +4 more
Electron scale solar wind (SW) turbulence has attracted great interest in recent years. Considerable evidence exists that the turbulence is not fully dissipated near the proton scale, but continues cascading down to electron scales. However, the scaling of the magnetic energy spectra as well as the nature of the plasma modes involved at those smal…
Enhanced Magnetic Compressibility and Isotropic Scale Invariance at Sub-ion Larmor Scales in Solar Wind Turbulence
Sahraoui, F.; Khotyaintsev, Yu. V.; Chapman, S. C. +3 more
The anisotropic nature of solar wind magnetic turbulence fluctuations is investigated scale by scale using high cadence in situ magnetic field measurements from the Cluster and ACE spacecraft missions. The data span five decades in scales from the inertial range to the electron Larmor radius. In contrast to the inertial range, there is a successiv…
Kinetic Plasma Turbulence in the Fast Solar Wind Measured by Cluster
Li, B.; Li, X.; Roberts, O. W.
The k-filtering technique and wave polarization analysis are applied to Cluster magnetic field data to study plasma turbulence at the scale of the ion gyroradius in the fast solar wind. Waves are found propagating in directions nearly perpendicular to the background magnetic field at such scales. The frequencies of these waves in the solar wind fr…
Collisionless Damping at Electron Scales in Solar Wind Turbulence
Howes, G. G.; TenBarge, J. M.; Dorland, W.
The dissipation of turbulence in the weakly collisional solar wind plasma is governed by unknown kinetic mechanisms. Two candidates have been suggested to play an important role in the dissipation, collisionless damping via wave-particle interactions and dissipation in small-scale current sheets. High resolution spacecraft measurements of the turb…
Vlasov Simulations of Multi-ion Plasma Turbulence in the Solar Wind
Veltri, P.; Perrone, D.; Servidio, S. +2 more
Hybrid Vlasov-Maxwell simulations are employed to investigate the role of kinetic effects in a two-dimensional turbulent multi-ion plasma, composed of protons, alpha particles, and fluid electrons. In the typical conditions of the solar-wind environment, and in situations of decaying turbulence, the numerical results show that the velocity distrib…
Gyrosurfing Acceleration of Ions in Front of Earth's Quasi-parallel Bow Shock
Dandouras, Iannis; Khotyaintsev, Yuri V.; Agapitov, Oleksiy +4 more
It is well known that shocks in space plasmas can accelerate particles to high energies. However, many details of the shock acceleration mechanism are still unknown. A critical element of shock acceleration is the injection problem; i.e., the presence of the so called seed particle population that is needed for the acceleration to work efficiently…
Polarization and Compressibility of Oblique Kinetic Alfvén Waves
Passot, T.; Goldstein, M. L.; Zank, G. P. +3 more
It is well known that a complete description of the solar wind requires a kinetic description and that, particularly at sub-proton scales, kinetic effects cannot be ignored. It is nevertheless usually assumed that at scales significantly larger than the proton gyroscale rL , magnetohydrodynamics or its extensions, such as Hall-MHD and t…
Parallel Electric Field Spectrum of Solar Wind Turbulence
Chen, C. H. K.; Mozer, F. S.
By searching through more than 10 satellite years of THEMIS and Cluster data, 3 reliable examples of parallel electric field turbulence in the undisturbed solar wind have been found. The perpendicular and parallel electric field spectra in these examples have similar shapes and amplitudes, even at large scales (frequencies below the ion gyroscale)…
Observation of Flux-tube Crossings in the Solar Wind
Li, G.; Li, X.; Arnold, L. +1 more
Current sheets are ubiquitous in the solar wind. They are a major source of the solar wind MHD turbulence intermittency. They may result from nonlinear interactions of the solar wind MHD turbulence or are the boundaries of flux tubes that originate from the solar surface. Some current sheets appear in pairs and are the boundaries of transient stru…
Test for Wavevector Anisotropies in Plasma Turbulence Cascades
Gary, S. Peter
The frequency and wavevector matching conditions in nonlinear three-wave coupling are used to test whether the forward cascade of plasma turbulence may lead to wavevector anisotropies in a homogeneous, collisionless, magnetized plasma. Linear kinetic theory at β p = 0.01, 0.10, and 1.0 is used to determine the frequency-wavenumber disp…