Observations of Langmuir ponderomotive effects using the Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory spacecraft as a density probe

Journal Article · Mon Aug 15 04:00:00 EDT 2011 · Physics of Plasmas

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3622667· OSTI ID:22043393

Henri, P ^[1]; Meyer-Vernet, N; Briand, C ^[2]; Donato, S ^[3]

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1. Centrum voor Plasma-Astrofysica, Departement Wiskunde, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200B, 3001 Leuven (Belgium)
2. LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, CNRS, UPMC, Universite Paris Diderot, 5 Place Jules Janssen, 92190 Meudon (France)
3. Dip. Fisica, Universita della Calabria, Via P. Bucci, 87036 Arcavacata di Rende (Italy)

Langmuir ponderomotive effects are nonlinear effects that enable to couple the electron and ion dynamics in space plasmas. The main difficulty to provide observational evidence of such nonlinear coupling is to simultaneously observe both fluctuations of plasma density and electric field. We have thus developed a new method to measure and to calibrate in situ small scale density fluctuations. Density fluctuations in the solar wind are measured using the observed quasistatic fluctuations of the STEREO spacecraft floating potential in the frequency range, where the spacecraft floating potential is in quasistatic equilibrium between photoionization and electron attachment, whereas the potential of the antenna, of much longer equilibrium time scale, is blind to the density fluctuations. Density fluctuations and Langmuir waves are thus directly and simultaneously measured using a dataset of more than three years of STEREO/WAVES measurements. We present here the first observational evidence for ponderomotive effects in the solar wind that nonlinearly couple density fluctuations to high energy Langmuir waves (({epsilon}{sub 0}E{sup 2})/(nk{sub B}T)>10{sup -4}).

• OSTI ID: 22043393
• Journal Information: Physics of Plasmas, Journal Name: Physics of Plasmas Journal Issue: 8 Vol. 18; ISSN PHPAEN; ISSN 1070-664X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
ASTROPHYSICS
COUPLING
DENSITY
ELECTRIC FIELDS
ELECTRON ATTACHMENT
EQUILIBRIUM
FLUCTUATIONS
FREQUENCY RANGE
IONS
LANGMUIR PROBE
PHOTOIONIZATION
PLASMA
PLASMA DENSITY
PONDEROMOTIVE FORCE
SOLAR WIND