Parametric decay of oblique Alfvén waves in two-dimensional hybrid simulations

Abstract

Certain types of plasma waves are known to become parametrically unstable under specific plasma conditions, in which the pump wave will decay into several daughter waves with different wavenumbers and frequencies. In the past, the related plasma instabilities have been treated analytically for various parameter regimes and by use of various numerical methods, yet the oblique propagation with respect to the background magnetic field has rarely been dealt with in two dimensions, mainly because of the high computational demand. Here we present a hybrid-simulation study of the parametric decay of a moderately oblique Alfvén wave having elliptical polarization. It is found that such a compressive wave can decay into waves with higher and lower wavenumbers than the pump.

arXiv comment5 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. E

References in corpus (3)

• Coronal Holes
• Kinetic cascade beyond magnetohydrodynamics of solar wind turbulence in two-dimensional hybrid simulations
• Parametric instabilities in magnetized multicomponent plasmas

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• The role of parametric instabilities in turbulence generation and proton heating: Hybrid simulations of parallel propagating Alfvén waves
• Modeling hot, anisotropic ion beams in the solar wind motivated by the Parker Solar Probe observations near perihelia