Quasilinear Evolution of Kinetic Alfven Wave Turbulence and Perpendicular Ion Heating in the Solar Wind

Abstract

The measured spectrum of kinetic Alfven wave fluctuations in the turbulent solar wind plasma is used to calculate the electron and ion distribution functions resulting from quasi-linear diffusion. The modified ion distribution function is found to be unstable to long wavelength electromagnetic ion cyclotron waves. These waves pitch angle scatter the parallel ion velocity into perpendicular velocity which effectively increases the perpendicular ion temperature.

14 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (1)

• Linear and Non-Linear Landau Resonance of Kinetic Alfvén Waves: Consequences for Electron Distribution and Wave Spectrum in the Solar Wind

Cited by in corpus (7)

• The multi-scale nature of the solar wind
• A Dynamical Model of Plasma Turbulence in the Solar Wind
• Ensemble Simulations of Proton Heating in the Solar Wind via Turbulence and Ion Cyclotron Resonance
• Co-existence of Whistler Waves with Kinetic Alfven Wave Turbulence for the High-beta Solar Wind Plasma
• Vlasov simulations of Kinetic Alfvén Waves at proton kinetic scales
• Velocity-Space Proton Diffusion in the Solar Wind Turbulence
• Solar plasma radio emission in the presence of imbalanced turbulence of kinetic-scale Alfvén waves