Electron Bulk Acceleration and Thermalization at Earth’s Quasiperpendicular Bow Shock [Electron Acceleration and Thermalization at Earth's Quasi-Perpendicular Bow Shock]
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States); Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)
- Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
- Univ. of Bergen, Bergen (Norway)
- Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)
- Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX (United States)
- Denali Scientific, Healy, AK (United States)
- Univ. de Toulouse (UPS), Toulouse (France)
- CNRS/Ecole Polytechnique/Sorbonne Univ./Univ. Paris Sud/Observatoire de Paris, Palaiseau Cedex (France)
- Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala (Sweden)
- KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm (Sweden)
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Electron heating at Earth’s quasiperpendicular bow shock has been surmised to be due to the combined effects of a quasistatic electric potential and scattering through wave-particle interaction. Here we report the observation of electron distribution functions indicating a new electron heating process occurring at the leading edge of the shock front. Incident solar wind electrons are accelerated parallel to the magnetic field toward downstream, reaching an electron-ion relative drift speed exceeding the electron thermal speed. The bulk acceleration is associated with an electric field pulse embedded in a whistler-mode wave. The high electron-ion relative drift is relaxed primarily through a nonlinear current-driven instability. Here, the relaxed distributions contain a beam traveling toward the shock as a remnant of the accelerated electrons. Similar distribution functions prevail throughout the shock transition layer, suggesting that the observed acceleration and thermalization is essential to the cross-shock electron heating.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396; SC0016278
- OSTI ID:
- 1477703
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1439741
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-18-26991; PRLTAO
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 120, Issue 22; ISSN 0031-9007
- Publisher:
- American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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