Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Gershman, Daniel J.
• Vinas, Adolfo F
• Dorelli, John C
• Boardsen, Scott A
• Avanov, Levon A
• Bellan, Paul M.
• Schwartz, Steven J.
• Lavraud, Benoit
• Coffey, Victoria N
• Chandler, Michael O
• Saito, Yoshifumi
• Paterson, William R
• Fuselier, Stephen A.
• Ergun, Robert E
• Strangeway, Robert J
• Russell, Christopher T.
• Giles, Barbara L
• Pollock, Craig J.
• Torbert, Roy B
• Burch, James L

Titel

Wave-Particle Energy Exchange Directly Observed in a Kinetic Alfven-Branch Wave

Ist Teil von

• Nature communications, 2017-03, Vol.8 (1), p.14719-14719, Article 14719

Ort / Verlag

Goddard Space Flight Center: Nature Publishing Group

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Quelle

EZB-FREE-00999 freely available EZB journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Alfven waves are fundamental plasma wave modes that permeate the universe. At small kinetic scales they provide a critical mechanism for the transfer of energy between electromagnetic fields and charged particles. These waves are important not only in planetary magnetospheres, heliospheres, and astrophysical systems, but also in laboratory plasma experiments and fusion reactors. Through measurement of charged particles and electromagnetic fields with NASAs Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, we utilize Earths magnetosphere as a plasma physics laboratory. Here we confirm the conservative energy exchange between the electromagnetic field fluctuations and the charged particles that comprise an undamped kinetic Alfven wave. Electrons confined between adjacent wave peaks may have contributed to saturation of damping effects via non-linear particle trapping. The investigation of these detailed wave dynamics has been unexplored territory in experimental plasma physics and is only recently enabled by high-resolution MMS observations.