Related papers: The electron distribution function downstream of t…
Observations show that plasma particles in the solar wind frequently display power-law velocity distributions, which can be isotropic or anisotropic. Particularly, the velocity distribution functions of solar wind electrons are frequently…
Photoionization produces supra-thermal electrons, electrons with much more energy than is found in a thermalized gas at electron temperatures characteristic of nebulae. The presence of these high energy electrons may solve the long-standing…
Estimating the temperature of the solar wind particles and their anisotropies is particularly important for understanding the origin of these deviations from thermal equilibrium as well as their effects. In the absence of energetic events…
Driven by recent RHESSI observations of confined loop-top hard X-ray sources in solar flares, we consider stochastic acceleration of electrons in the presence of Coulomb collisions. If electron escape from the acceleration region can be…
Shocks, turbulence and winds all influence the electron velocity distribution in hot plasmas, exciting lower-energy electrons and generating a high-energy (typically power-law) tail. This effect, typically described as a kappa distribution…
The departure of particle distributions from the Maxwellian is commonly observed in space plasmas. These non-Maxwellian distributions which are typical for plasmas that are not in thermal equilibrium, can be modeled with…
During solar flares, a large fraction of the released magnetic energy is carried by energetic electrons that transfer and deposit energy in the Sun's atmosphere. Electron transport is often approximated by a cold thick-target model (CTTM),…
We study the behaviour of shocked wind-electrons leaving wind-driving stars after undergoing the outer wind termination shock. As an example, we describe the evolution of the keV-energetic electron distribution function downstream of the…
Analysis of 15314 electron velocity distribution functions (VDFs) within $\pm$2 hours of 52 interplanetary (IP) shocks observed by the \emph{Wind} spacecraft near 1 AU are introduced. The electron VDFs are fit to the sum of three model…
The acceleration of thermal solar wind protons at spherical interplanetary shocks driven by coronal mass ejections is investigated. The solar wind velocity distribution is represented using $\kappa$-functions, which are transformed in…
A vexing puzzle in the study of planetary nebulae and \ion{H}{2} regions is that the plasma diagnostic results based on collisionally excited lines systematically differ from those based on recombination lines. A fairly speculative…
The propagation of ion acoustic shocks in nonthermal plasmas is investigated, both analytically and numerically. An unmagnetized collisionless electron-ion plasma is considered, featuring a superthermal (non-Maxwellian) electron…
Acceleration of particles and plasma heating is one of the fundamental problems in solar flare physics. An accurate determination of the spectrum of flare energized electrons over a broad energy range is crucial for our understanding of…
Collisionless shocks heat electrons in the solar wind, interstellar blast waves, and hot gas permeating galaxy clusters. How much shock heating goes to electrons instead of ions, and what plasma physics controls electron heating? We…
Effects of non-thermal high-energy electrons on Langmuir wave-particle interaction are investigated by an initial value approach. A Vlasov-Poisson simulation is employed which is based on the splitting scheme by Cheng and Knorr [Cheng, C.Z.…
Suprathermal electrons and inertial drifting electrons, so called electron beam, are crucial to the nonlinear dynamics of electrostatic solitary waves observed in several astrophysical plasmas. In this paper, the propagation of…
The acceleration of suprathermal electrons in the solar wind is mainly associated with shocks driven by interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs). It is well known that the acceleration of electrons is much more efficient at…
The measurement of electron temperatures and metallicities in H ii regions and Planetary Nebulae (PNe) has-for several decades-presented a problem: results obtained using different techniques disagree. What it worse, they disagree…
The nonlinear dynamics of electron-acoustic localized structures in a collisionless and unmagnetized plasma consisting of "cool" inertial electrons, "hot" electrons having a kappa distribution, and stationary ions is studied. The…
The evolution of plasma entropy and the process of plasma energy re-distribution at the collisionless plasma shock front are evaluated based on the high temporal resolution data from the four MMS spacecraft during the crossing of the…