Related papers: Collisional Thermalization of Hydrogen and Helium …
Plasma processes occurring in the corona and solar wind can be probed by studying the thermodynamic properties of different ion species. However, most in-situ observations of positive ions in the solar wind are taken at 1 AU, where…
A central problem of space plasma physics is how protons and electrons are heated in a turbulent, magnetized plasma. The differential heating of charged species due to dissipation of turbulent fluctuations plays a key role in solar wind…
We analyze measured proton and electron temperatures in the high-speed solar wind in order to calculate the separate rates of heat deposition for protons and electrons. When comparing with other regions of the heliosphere, the fast solar…
The solar wind undergoes significant heating as it propagates away from the Sun; the exact mechanisms responsible for this heating are not yet fully understood. We present for the first time a statistical test for one of the proposed…
According to \emph{Wind} observations between June 2004 and May 2019, this Letter investigates the proton and alpha particle temperatures in the space of ($\theta_d$, $V_d/V_A$) for the first time, where $\theta_d$ and $V_d$ are the radial…
To properly describe heating in weakly collisional turbulent plasmas such as the solar wind, inter-particle collisions should be taken into account. Collisions can convert ordered energy into heat by means of irreversible relaxation towards…
The solar wind plasma is a fully ionized and turbulent gas ejected by the outer layers of the solar corona at very high speed, mainly composed by protons and electrons, with a small percentage of helium nuclei and a significantly lower…
We present a long-duration ($\sim$10 years) statistical analysis of the temperatures, plasma betas, and temperature ratios for the electron, proton, and alpha-particle populations observed by the \emph{Wind} spacecraft near 1 AU. The…
Characterizing the plasma state in the near-Sun environment is essential to constrain the mechanisms that heat and accelerate the solar wind. In this study, we use Parker Solar Probe (PSP) observations from Encounters 1 through 24 to…
Previous studies have shown that the observed temperature anisotropies of protons and alpha particles in the solar wind are constrained by theoretical thresholds for pressure-anisotropy-driven instabilities such as the…
Heating of polar coronal holes during solar minimum and acceleration of the fast solar wind issuing therefrom lack comprehensive theoretical understanding. Wave particle interactions are considered to have crucial effects on the extreme…
We explore a mechanism, entirely new to the fast solar wind, of electron heating by lower hybrid waves to explain the shift to higher charge states observed in various elements in the fast wind at 1 A.U. relative to the original coronal…
We extend previous theories of stochastic ion heating to account for the motion of ions along the magnetic field. We derive an analytic expression for the ion-to-proton perpendicular temperature ratio in the solar wind for any ion species,…
The proton temperature anisotropy in the solar wind exhibits apparent bounds which are compatible with the theoretical constraints imposed by temperature-anisotropy driven kinetic instabilities. Recent statistical analyses based on…
The heating of ions and electrons due to turbulent dissipation plays a crucial role in the thermodynamics of the solar wind and other plasma environments. Using magnetic field and thermal plasma observations from the first two perihelia of…
In this Letter we study the connection between the large-scale dynamics of the turbulence cascade and particle heating on kinetic scales. We find that the inertial range turbulence amplitude ($\delta B_i$; measured in the range of 0.01-0.1…
The decay of the solar wind helium to hydrogen temperature ratio due to Coulomb thermalization can be used to measure how far from the Sun strong preferential ion heating occurs. Previous work has shown that a zone of preferential ion…
The high-speed solar wind is typically the simplest and least stochastic type of large-scale plasma flow in the heliosphere. For much of the solar cycle, it is connected magnetically to large polar coronal holes on the Sun's surface.…
The fast solar wind is a collisionless plasma permeated by plasma waves on many different scales. A plasma wave represents the natural interplay between the periodic changes of the electromagnetic field and the associated coherent motions…
In order to compare the x-wind with observations, one needs to be able to calculate its thermal and ionization properties. We formulate the physical basis for the streamline-by-streamline integration of the ionization and heat equations of…