Related papers: Stability of superthermal strahl electrons in the …
In this work, we analyze the kinetic stability of a solar wind electron distribution composed of core and strahl subpopulations. The core is modeled by a drifting Maxwellian distribution, while the strahl is modeled by an analytic function…
We develop a kinetic theory for {the electron strahl, a beam of energetic electrons which propagate} from the sun along the Parker-spiral-shaped magnetic field lines. By assuming a Maxwellian electron distribution function in the near-sun…
We develop a model for the strahl population in the solar wind -- a narrow, low-density and high-energy electron beam centered on the magnetic field direction. Our model is based on the solution of the electron drift-kinetic equation at…
We analyze the micro-kinetic stability of the electron strahl in the solar wind depending on heliocentric distance. The oblique fast-magnetosonic/whistler (FM/W) instability has emerged in the literature as a key candidate mechanism for the…
We propose a transport theory for the kinetic evolution of solar-wind electrons in the heliosphere. We derive a gyro-averaged kinetic transport equation that accounts for the spherical expansion of the solar wind and the geometry of the…
There is wide observational evidence that electron velocity distribution functions (eVDF) observed in the solar wind generally present enhanced tails and field-aligned skewness. These properties may induce the excitation of electromagnetic…
We propose a kinetic model describing the formation of the strahl and halo electron populations in the solar wind. We demonstrate that the suprathermal electrons propagating from the sun along the Parker-spiral magnetic field lines are…
Solar wind electron velocity distributions at 1 au consist of a thermal "core" population and two suprathermal populations: "halo" and "strahl". The core and halo are quasi-isotropic, whereas the strahl typically travels radially outwards…
Electron velocity distributions in the solar wind are known to have field-aligned skewness, which has been characterized by the presence of secondary populations such as the halo and strahl. Skewness may provide energy for the excitation of…
The electrons are an essential particle species in the solar wind. They often exhibit non-equilibrium features in their velocity distribution function. These include temperature anisotropies, tails (kurtosis), and reflectional asymmetries…
The fluid behavior of the solar wind is affected by the heat flux carried by the suprathermal electron populations, especially the electron strahl (or beam) that propagates along the magnetic field. In turn, the electron strahl cannot be…
Solar wind electrons play an important role in the energy balance of the solar wind acceleration by carrying energy into interplanetary space in the form of electron heat flux. The heat flux is stored in the complex electron velocity…
Context. In a previous paper (Afify et al. 2024), we have investigated the stability threshold of the ion-ion acoustic instability (IIAI) in parameter regimes compatible with recent Parker Solar Probe (PSP, (Fox et al. 2016)) observations,…
One of the basic properties of the solar wind, that is the high speed of the fast wind, is still not satisfactorily explained. This is mainly due to the theoretical difficulty of treating weakly collisional plasmas. The fluid approach…
The collisionless dissipation of anisotropic Alfv\'enic turbulence is a promising candidate to solve the solar wind heating problem. Extensive studies examined the kinetic properties of Alfv\'en waves in simple Maxwellian or bi-Maxwellian…
In-situ observations of the solar wind have shown that the electron velocity distribution function (VDF) consists of a quasi-Maxwellian core, comprising most of the electron population, and two sparser components: the halo, which are…
The formation of the observed core-halo feature in the solar wind electron velocity distribution function is a long-time puzzle. In this letter based on the current knowledge of nanoflares we show that the nanoflare-accelerated electron…
The ubiquity of high-energy tails in the charged particle velocity distribution functions observed in space plasmas suggests the existence of an underlying process responsible for taking a fraction of the charged particle population out of…
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…
We investigate the scattering of strahl electrons by microinstabilities as a mechanism for creating the electron halo in the solar wind. We develop a mathematical framework for the description of electron-driven microinstabilities and…