EGU21-14805
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14805
EGU General Assembly 2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Electrostatic waves in the shock ramp and their effect on plasma energetics.

Ahmad Lalti1,2, Yuri Khotyaintsev1, Daniel Graham1, Andris Vaivad3, and Andreas Johlander4
Ahmad Lalti et al.
  • 1Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Sweden
  • 2Space and Plasma Physics, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
  • 3Space and Plasma Physics, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
  • 4Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

Energy dissipation at collisionless shocks is still an open question. Wave particle interactions are believed to be at the heart of it, but the exact details are still to be figured out. One type of waves that is known to be an efficient dissipator of solar wind kinetic energy are electrostatic waves in the shock ramp, such as ion acoustic waves with frequency around the ion plasma frequency or Bernstein waves with frequency around the electron cyclotron frequency and its harmonics. The electric field of such waves is typically larger than 100 mV/m, large enough to disturb particle dynamics. In this study we use the magnetospheric multiscale (MMS) spacecraft, to investigate the source and evolution of electrostatic waves in the shock ramp of quasi-perpendicular super-critical shocks, and study their effect on solar wind thermalization.

How to cite: Lalti, A., Khotyaintsev, Y., Graham, D., Vaivad, A., and Johlander, A.: Electrostatic waves in the shock ramp and their effect on plasma energetics., EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-14805, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14805, 2021.

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