Related papers: Electron-driven instabilities in the solar wind
An electron distribution with a temperature anisotropy T_par/T_perp > 1 can lead to the Electron Firehose instability (Here par and perp denote directions relative to the background magnetic field B_0). Since possible particle acceleration…
The evolution of the electron heat flux in the solar wind is regulated by the interplay between several effects: solar wind expansion, that can potentially drive velocity-space instabilties, turbulence and wave-particle interactions, and,…
In space plasmas kinetic instabilities are driven by the beaming (drifting) components and/or the temperature anisotropy of charged particles. The heat-flux instabilities are known in the literature as electromagnetic modes destabilized by…
Spacecraft observations showed that electron heat conduction in the solar wind is probably regulated by whistler waves, whose origin and efficiency in electron heat flux suppression is actively investigated. In this paper, we present…
Where and under what conditions the transfer of energy between electromagnetic fields and particles takes place in the solar wind remains an open question. We investigate the conditions that promote the growth of kinetic instabilities…
Using high-resolution data from Solar Orbiter, we investigate the plasma conditions necessary for the proton temperature anisotropy driven mirror-mode and oblique firehose instabilities to occur in the solar wind. We find that the unstable…
In situ observations of the solar wind show a limited level of particle temperature anisotropy with respect to the interplanetary magnetic field direction. Kinetic electromagnetic instabilities are efficient to prevent the excessive growth…
We present for the first time the joint distribution of electron heat flux and electron plasma beta, and the joint distribution of core electron drift velocity and electron plasma beta using a statistically large dataset of solar wind…
The role of solar wind expansion in generating whistler waves is investigated using the EB-iPic3D code, which models solar wind expansion self-consistently within a fully kinetic semi-implicit approach. The simulation is initialized with an…
We present waveform observations of electromagnetic lower hybrid and whistler waves with f_ci << f < f_ce downstream of four supercritical interplanetary (IP) shocks using the Wind search coil magnetometer. The whistler waves were observed…
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…
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…
We present an analysis of simultaneous particle and field measurements from the ARTEMIS spacecraft which demonstrate that quasi-parallel whistler waves in the solar wind can be generated locally by a bulk flow of halo electrons (whistler…
In collision-poor plasmas from space, e.g., solar wind or stellar outflows, the heat-flux carried by the strahl or beaming electrons is expected to be regulated by the self-generated instabilities. Recently, simultaneous field and particle…
We conduct two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations to investigate the scattering of electron heat flux by self-generated oblique electromagnetic waves. The heat flux is modeled as a bi-kappa distribution with a T_parallel > T_perp…
The firehose and mirror instabilities are thought to arise in a variety of space and astrophysical plasmas, constraining the pressure anisotropies and drifts between particle species. The plasma stability depends on all species…
We present a kinetic stability analysis of the solar wind electron distribution function consisting of the Maxwellian core and the magnetic-field aligned strahl, a superthermal electron beam propagating away from the sun. We use an electron…
In the absence of efficient collisions, deviations from thermal equilibrium of plasma particle distributions are controlled by the self-generated instabilities. The whistler instability is a notorious example, usually responsible for the…
We use magnetic helicity to characterise solar wind fluctuations at proton-kinetic scales from Wind observations. For the first time, we separate the contributions to helicity from fluctuations propagating at angles quasi-parallel and…
At kinetic scales in the solar wind, instabilities transfer energy from particles to fluctuations in the electromagnetic fields while restoring plasma conditions towards thermodynamic equilibrium. We investigate the interplay between…