1,2,2,3,2,4,5,- 1Department of Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden (ida.svenningsson@chalmers.se)
- 2Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala, Sweden
- 3Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
- 4Laboratory of Physics and Chemistry of the Environment and Space (LPC2E), Orléans, France
- 5Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA
- 6Department of Physics, Imperial College London, London, UK
In the Earth’s magnetosheath, several processes contribute to energy dissipation and plasma heating, one of which is wave-particle interactions between whistler waves and electrons. The whistler-heat flux instability is known to scatter the strahl electrons in the solar wind. However, the heat flux properties and evolution across the Earth’s magnetosheath region have not yet been explored.
We present Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) observations from 18 hours of burst-mode measurements using the unbiased magnetosheath campaign. We quantify the electron heat flux in the magnetosheath and examine the role of whistler instabilities in regulating it. Our results show that the heat flux follows the magnetosheath magnetic field as it drapes around the magnetosphere. We find that the heat flux is constrained by whistler instability thresholds and is aligned with the propagation of low-frequency whistler waves. We also present a case study investigating direct evidence for the whistler-heat flux instability in the magnetosheath.
How to cite: Svenningsson, I., Yordanova, E., Larsson, M., Khotyaintsev, Y. V., André, M., Cozzani, G., Chasapis, A., and Schwartz, S. J.: Electron heat flux and whistler instability in the Earth’s magnetosheath, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-6615, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-6615, 2026.
