EGU22-6084, updated on 10 Jan 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-6084
EGU General Assembly 2022
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Suprathermal populations and small scale fluctuations in the solar wind

Marian Lazar1,2, Rodrigo Lopez3, Hamd Shaaban4, Stefaan Poedts1,5, Horst Fichtner2, and Peter Yoon6
Marian Lazar et al.
  • 1KU Leuven, Centre for mathematical Plasma-Astrophysics, Department of Mathematics, Leuven, Belgium (marianlazar@yahoo.com)
  • 2Ruhr-University Bochum, Theoretical Physics 4, Bochum, Germany
  • 3Departamento de Fisica, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Santiago, Chile
  • 4Theoretical Physics Research Group, Physics Department, Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt
  • 5Institute of Physics, University of Maria Curie-Sklodowska, Lublin, Poland
  • 6Institute for Physical Science and Technology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, United States

In the last decade, studies of solar wind plasma have shown that suprathermal populations (up to a few keV) are closely linked to wave turbulence and fluctuations at small (or kinetic) scales. We aim to identify those types of wave fluctuations observed at these scales scales, for which existing theories predict a major implication in particle acceleration and formation of suprathermal tails in the velocity distributions of plasma particles. On the other hand, it is currently believed that fluctuation power (magnetic, density, velocity) measured at ion scales and lower are generated by the turbulent cascade but also wave instabilities. Therefore, we also intend to discuss a number of recent results describing the kinetic instabilities driven by the anisotropy of velocity distributions (e.g., temperature anisotropy, field-aligned drifts), and how are these instabilities influenced by the suprathermal populations. These results help to understand the energy exchanges between particles and electromagnetic fields, not only in the solar wind but also in the coronal plasma ejections, with consequences for the space weather and terrestrial magnetosphere.

How to cite: Lazar, M., Lopez, R., Shaaban, H., Poedts, S., Fichtner, H., and Yoon, P.: Suprathermal populations and small scale fluctuations in the solar wind, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-6084, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-6084, 2022.