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Title: Electron mirror and cyclotron instabilities for solar wind plasma
ABSTRACT

The solar wind plasma is characterized by unequal effective kinetic temperatures defined in perpendicular and parallel directions with respect to the ambient magnetic field. For electrons, the excessive perpendicular temperature anisotropy leads to quasi-parallel electromagnetic electron cyclotron (or whistler) instability and aperiodic electron-mirror instability with oblique wave vectors. The present paper carries out a direct side-by-side comparison of quasi-linear (QL) theory and particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation of combined mirror and cyclotron instabilities acting upon the initially anisotropic electron temperatures, and find that the QL theory satisfactorily encapsulates the non-linear aspect of the combined instability effects. However, a discrepancy between the present study and a previous PIC simulation result is also found, which points to the need for further investigation to resolve such an issue.

 
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Award ID(s):
1842643
NSF-PAR ID:
10360559
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
Oxford University Press
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume:
509
Issue:
3
ISSN:
0035-8711
Page Range / eLocation ID:
p. 3764-3771
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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