PROTON HEATING IN SOLAR WIND COMPRESSIBLE TURBULENCE WITH COLLISIONS BETWEEN COUNTER-PROPAGATING WAVES
- School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871 (China)
- Institute for Experimental and Applied Physics, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, D-24118 Kiel (Germany)
- Department of Physics, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ (United Kingdom)
- Sate Key Laboratory of Space Weather, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190 (China)
Magnetohydronamic turbulence is believed to play a crucial role in heating laboratory, space, and astrophysical plasmas. However, the precise connection between the turbulent fluctuations and the particle kinetics has not yet been established. Here we present clear evidence of plasma turbulence heating based on diagnosed wave features and proton velocity distributions from solar wind measurements by the Wind spacecraft. For the first time, we can report the simultaneous observation of counter-propagating magnetohydrodynamic waves in the solar wind turbulence. As opposed to the traditional paradigm with counter-propagating Alfvén waves (AWs), anti-sunward AWs are encountered by sunward slow magnetosonic waves (SMWs) in this new type of solar wind compressible turbulence. The counter-propagating AWs and SWs correspond, respectively, to the dominant and sub-dominant populations of the imbalanced Elsässer variables. Nonlinear interactions between the AWs and SMWs are inferred from the non-orthogonality between the possible oscillation direction of one wave and the possible propagation direction of the other. The associated protons are revealed to exhibit bi-directional asymmetric beams in their velocity distributions: sunward beams appear in short, narrow patterns and anti-sunward in broad extended tails. It is suggested that multiple types of wave–particle interactions, i.e., cyclotron and Landau resonances with AWs and SMWs at kinetic scales, are taking place to jointly heat the protons perpendicular and in parallel.
- OSTI ID:
- 22518707
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 813, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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