Comment on "Mode Conversion of Waves In The Ion-Cyclotron Frequency Range in Magnetospheric Plasmas"
- Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
Recently, Kazakov and Fulop [1] studied mode conversion (MC) at the ion-ion hybrid (IIH) resonance in planetary magnetospheric plasmas by simplifying the dispersion relation of the fast wave (FW) modes to describe a cutoff-resonance (CR) pair near the IIH resonance, which can be reduced to a Budden problem. They suggested that when the IIH resonance frequency (ωS) approaches the crossover frequency (ωcr), and the parallel wavenumber (k∥) is close to the critical wavenumber k* ∥(ωS = ωcr), MC can be efficient for arbitrary heavy ion density ratios. In this Comment, we argue that (a) the FW dispersion relation cannot be simplified to the CR pair especially near ωcr because in many parameter regimes there is a cutoff-resonance-cutoff (CRC) triplet that completely changes the wave absorption; and (b) the maximum MC efficiency does not always occur near k∥ ≈ k*∥∥.
- Research Organization:
- Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- DOE Contract Number:
- ACO2-09CH11466
- OSTI ID:
- 1128922
- Report Number(s):
- PPPL-5003
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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