您选择的条件: Lloyd D. Woodham
  • The In Situ Signature of Cyclotron Resonant Heating

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: The dissipation of magnetized turbulence is an important paradigm for describing heating and energy transfer in astrophysical environments such as the solar corona and wind; however, the specific collisionless processes behind dissipation and heating remain relatively unconstrained by measurements. Remote sensing observations have suggested the presence of strong temperature anisotropy in the solar corona consistent with cyclotron resonant heating. In the solar wind, in situ magnetic field measurements reveal the presence of cyclotron waves, while measured ion velocity distribution functions have hinted at the active presence of cyclotron resonance. Here, we present Parker Solar Probe observations that connect the presence of ion-cyclotron waves directly to signatures of resonant damping in observed proton-velocity distributions. We show that the observed cyclotron wave population coincides with both flattening in the phase space distribution predicted by resonant quasilinear diffusion and steepening in the turbulent spectra at the ion-cyclotron resonant scale. In measured velocity distribution functions where cyclotron resonant flattening is weaker, the distributions are nearly uniformly subject to ion-cyclotron wave damping rather than emission, indicating that the distributions can damp the observed wave population. These results are consistent with active cyclotron heating in the solar wind.

  • Anisotropy of Solar-Wind Turbulence in the Inner Heliosphere at Kinetic Scales: PSP Observations

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2023-02-19

    摘要: The anisotropy of solar wind turbulence is a critical issue in understanding the physics of energy transfer between scales and energy conversion between fields and particles in the heliosphere. Using the measurement of \emph{Parker Solar Probe} (\emph{PSP}), we present an observation of the anisotropy at kinetic scales in the slow, Alfv\'enic, solar wind in the inner heliosphere. \textbf{The magnetic compressibility behaves as expected for kinetic Alfv\'enic turbulence below the ion scale.} A steepened transition range is found between the inertial and kinetic ranges in all directions with respect to the local background magnetic field direction. The anisotropy of $k_\perp \gg k_\parallel$ is found evident in both transition and kinetic ranges, with the power anisotropy $P_\perp/P_\parallel > 10$ in the kinetic range leading over that in the transition range and being stronger than that at 1 au. The spectral index varies from $\alpha_{t\parallel}=-5.7\pm 1.0$ to $\alpha_{t\perp}=-3.7\pm 0.3$ in the transition range and $\alpha_{k\parallel}=-3.12\pm 0.22$ to $\alpha_{k\perp}=-2.57\pm 0.09$ in the kinetic range. The corresponding wavevector anisotropy has the scaling of $k_\parallel \sim k_\perp^{0.71\pm 0.17}$ in the transition range, and changes to $k_\parallel \sim k_\perp^{0.38\pm 0.09}$ in the kinetic range, consistent with the kinetic Alfv\'enic turbulence at sub-ion scales.