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During the solar minimum, when the Sun is at its least active, the solar wind1,2 is observed at high latitudes as a predominantly fast (more than 500 kilometres per second), highly Alfvenic rarefied stream of plasma originating from deep within coronal holes. Closer to the ecliptic plane, the solar wind is interspersed with a more variable slow wind3 of less than 500 kilometres per second. The precise origins of the slow wind streams are less certain4; theories and observations suggest that they may originate at the tips of helmet streamers5,6, from interchange reconnection near coronal hole boundaries7,8, or within coronal holes with highly diverging magnetic fields9,10. The heating mechanism required to drive the solar wind is also unresolved, although candidate mechanisms include Alfven-wave turbulence11,12, heating by reconnection in nanoflares13, ion cyclotron wave heating14 and acceleration by thermal gradients1. At a distance of one astronomical unit, the wind is mixed and evolved, and therefore much of the diagnostic structure of these sources and processes has been lost. Here we present observations from the Parker Solar Probe15 at 36 to 54 solar radii that show evidence of slow Alfvenic solar wind emerging from a small equatorial coronal hole. The measured magnetic field exhibits patches of large, intermittent reversals that are associated with jets of plasma and enhanced Poynting flux and that are interspersed in a smoother and less turbulent flow with a near-radial magnetic field. Furthermore, plasma-wave measurements suggest the existence of electron and ion velocity-space micro-instabilities10,16 that are associated with plasma heating and thermalization processes. Our measurements suggest that there is an impulsive mechanism associated with solar-wind energization and that micro-instabilities play a part in heating, and we provide evidence that low-latitude coronal holes are a key source of the slow solar wind. Measurements from the Parker Solar Probe show that slow solar wind near the Sun’s equator originates in coronal holes.

All authors: Zouganelis, I.; De Groof, A.; Walsh, A. P.; Williams, D. R.; Müller, D.; St Cyr, O. C.; Auchère, F.; Berghmans, D.; Fludra, A.; Horbury, T. S.; Howard, R. A.; Krucker, S.; Maksimovic, M.; Owen, C. J.; Rodríguez-Pacheco, J.; Romoli, M.; Solanki, S. K.; Watson, C.; Sanchez, L.; Lefort, J.; Osuna, P.; Gilbert, H. R.; Nieves-Chinchilla, T.; Abbo, L.; Alexandrova, O.; Anastasiadis, A.; Andretta, V.; Antonucci, E.; Appourchaux, T.; Aran, A.; Arge, C. N.; Aulanier, G.; Baker, D.; Bale, S. D.; Battaglia, M.; Bellot Rubio, L.; Bemporad, A.; Berthomier, M.; Bocchialini, K.; Bonnin, X.; Brun, A. S.; Bruno, R.; Buchlin, E.; Büchner, J.; Bucik, R.; Carcaboso, F.; Carr, R.; Carrasco-Blázquez, I.; Cecconi, B.; Cernuda Cangas, I.; Chen, C. H. K.; Chitta, L. P.; Chust, T.; Dalmasse, K.; D'Amicis, R.; Da Deppo, V.; De Marco, R.; Dolei, S.; Dolla, L.; Dudok de Wit, T.; van Driel-Gesztelyi, L.; Eastwood, J. P.; Espinosa Lara, F.; Etesi, L.; Fedorov, A.; Félix-Redondo, F.; Fineschi, S.; Fleck, B.; Fontaine, D.; Fox, N. J.; Gandorfer, A.; Génot, V.; Georgoulis, M. K.; Gissot, S.; Giunta, A.; Gizon, L.; Gómez-Herrero, R.; Gontikakis, C.; Graham, G.; Green, L.; Grundy, T.; Haberreiter, M.; Harra, L. K.; Hassler, D. M.; Hirzberger, J.; Ho, G. C.; Hurford, G.; Innes, D.; Issautier, K.; James, A. W.; Janitzek, N.; Janvier, M.; Jeffrey, N.; Jenkins, J.; Khotyaintsev, Y.; Klein, K. -L.; Kontar, E. P.; Kontogiannis, I.; Krafft, C.; Krasnoselskikh, V.; Kretzschmar, M.; Labrosse, N.; Lagg, A.; Landini, F.; Lavraud, B.; Leon, I.; Lepri, S. T.; Lewis, G. R.; Liewer, P.; Linker, J.; Livi, S.; Long, D. M.; Louarn, P.; Malandraki, O.; Maloney, S.; Martinez-Pillet, V.; Martinovic, M.; Masson, A.; Matthews, S.; Matteini, L.; Meyer-Vernet, N.; Moraitis, K.; Morton, R. J.; Musset, S.; Nicolaou, G.; Nindos, A.; O'Brien, H.; Orozco Suarez, D.; Owens, M.; Pancrazzi, M.; Papaioannou, A.; Parenti, S.; Pariat, E.; Patsourakos, S.; Perrone, D.; Peter, H.; Pinto, R. F.; Plainaki, C.; Plettemeier, D.; Plunkett, S. P.; Raines, J. M.; Raouafi, N.; Reid, H.; Retino, A.; Rezeau, L.; Rochus, P.; Rodriguez, L.; Rodriguez-Garcia, L.; Roth, M.; Rouillard, A. P.; Sahraoui, F.; Sasso, C.; Schou, J.; Schühle, U.; Sorriso-Valvo, L.; Soucek, J.; Spadaro, D.; Stangalini, M.; Stansby, D.; Steller, M.; Strugarek, A.; Štverák, Š.; Susino, R.; Telloni, D.; Terasa, C.; Teriaca, L.; Toledo-Redondo, S.; del Toro Iniesta, J. C.; Tsiropoula, G.; Tsounis, A.; Tziotziou, K.; Valentini, F.; Vaivads, A.; Vecchio, A.; Velli, M.; Verbeeck, C.; Verdini, A.; Verscharen, D.; Vilmer, N.; Vourlidas, A.; Wicks, R.; Wimmer-Schweingruber, R. F.; Wiegelmann, T.; Young, P. R.; Zhukov, A. N., Solar Orbiter is the first space mission observing the solar plasma both in situ and remotely, from a close distance, in and out of the ecliptic. The ultimate goal is to understand how the Sun produces and controls the heliosphere, filling the Solar System and driving the planetary environments. With six remote-sensing and four in-situ instrument suites, the coordination and planning of the operations are essential to address the following four top-level science questions: (1) What drives the solar wind and where does the coronal magnetic field originate?; (2) How do solar transients drive heliospheric variability?; (3) How do solar eruptions produce energetic particle radiation that fills the heliosphere?; (4) How does the solar dynamo work and drive connections between the Sun and the heliosphere? Maximising the mission's science return requires considering the characteristics of each orbit, including the relative position of the spacecraft to Earth (affecting downlink rates), trajectory events (such as gravitational assist manoeuvres), and the phase of the solar activity cycle. Furthermore, since each orbit's science telemetry will be downloaded over the course of the following orbit, science operations must be planned at mission level, rather than at the level of individual orbits. It is important to explore the way in which those science questions are translated into an actual plan of observations that fits into the mission, thus ensuring that no opportunities are missed. First, the overarching goals are broken down into specific, answerable questions along with the required observations and the so-called Science Activity Plan (SAP) is developed to achieve this. The SAP groups objectives that require similar observations into Solar Orbiter Observing Plans, resulting in a strategic, top-level view of the optimal opportunities for science observations during the mission lifetime. This allows for all four mission goals to be addressed. In this paper, we introduce Solar Orbiter's SAP through a series of examples and the strategy being followed. © 2020 ESO., Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA with contributions from national agencies of ESA member states. The spacecraft has been developed by Airbus and is being operated by ESA from the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. Science operations are carried out at ESA's European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) in Villafranca del Castillo, Spain. SWA is an international collaboration which has been funded by the UKSA, CNES, ASI, NASA and the Czech contribution to the ESA PRODEX programme. UAH authors want to thanks the Spanish MINECO-FPI-2016 predoctoral grant with FSE, and its project FEDER/MCIU-AEEI/Proyecto ESP2017-88436-R. The Spanish contribution to SO/PHI has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through several projects, the last one being RTI2018-096886-B-C5, and by "Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa" programme under grant SEV-2017-0709. RAH, RCC, DMM, SPP, and AV acknowledge the support of the NASA Heliophysics Division, Solar Orbiter Collaboration Office under IAT NNG09EK11I. JEP acknowledges grant UKRI/STFC ST/N000692/1. All French involvements are supported by CNES and CNRS. DV is supported by the STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowship ST/P003826/1 and STFC Consolidated Grant ST/S000240/1. The authors thank the referee for her constructive comments and suggestions, which led to the substantial improvement of this paper.

Electric fields are generally measured or calculated using two intuitive assumptions: (1) the electric field equals the voltage divided by the antenna length when the antenna is electromagnetically...

International audience; We discuss the solar wind electron temperatures T-e as measured in the nascent solar wind by Parker Solar Probe during its first perihelion pass. The measurements have been obtained by fitting the high-frequency part of quasithermal noise spectra recorded by the Radio Frequency Spectrometer. In addition we compare these measurements with those obtained by the electrostatic analyzer discussed in Halekas et al. These first electron observations show an anticorrelation between T-e and the wind bulk speed V: this anticorrelation is most likely the remnant of the wellknown mapping observed at 1 au and beyond between the fast wind and its coronal hole sources, where electrons are observed to be cooler than in the quiet corona. We also revisit Helios electron temperature measurements and show, for the first time, that an in situ (T-e, V) anticorrelation is well observed at 0.3 au but disappears as the wind expands, evolves, and mixes with different electron temperature gradients for different wind speeds.

We present initial results from the Radio Frequency Spectrometer (RFS), the high frequency component of the FIELDS experiment on the Parker Solar Probe (PSP). During the first PSP solar encounter (2018 November), only a few small radio bursts were observed. During the second encounter (2019 April), copious Type III radio bursts occurred, including intervals of radio storms where bursts occurred continuously. In this paper, we present initial observations of the characteristics of Type III radio bursts in the inner heliosphere, calculating occurrence rates, amplitude distributions, and spectral properties of the observed bursts. We also report observations of several bursts during the second encounter which display circular polarization in the right hand polarized sense, with a degree of polarization of 0.15-0.38 in the range from 8-12 MHz. The degree of polarization can be explained either by depolarization of initially 100% polarized $o$-mode emission, or by direct generation of emission in the $o$ and $x$-mode simultaneously. Direct in situ observations in future PSP encounters could provide data which can distinguish these mechanisms., 12 pages, 7 figures, to be published in ApJS

Heat transport in the solar corona and wind is still a major unsolved astrophysical problem. Because of the key role played by electrons, the electron density and temperature(s) are important prerequisites for understanding these plasmas. We present such in situ measurements along the two first solar encounters of Parker Solar Probe (PSP), between 0.5 and 0.17 AU from the Sun, revealing different states of the emerging solar wind near solar activity minimum. These preliminary results are obtained from a simplified analysis of the plasma quasi-thermal noise (QTN) spectrum measured by the Radio Frequency Spectrometer (RFS/FIELDS). The local electron density is deduced from the tracking of the plasma line, which enables accurate measurements, independent of calibrations and spacecraft perturbations, whereas the temperatures of the thermal and supra-thermal components of the velocity distribution, as well as the average kinetic temperature are deduced from the shape of the plasma line. The temperature of the weakly collisional thermal population, similar for both encounters, decreases with distance as $R^{-0.74}$, much slower than adiabatic. In contrast, the temperature of the nearly collisionless suprathermal population exhibits a virtually flat radial variation. The 7-second resolution of the density measurements enables us to deduce the low-frequency spectrum of compressive fluctuations around perihelion, varying as $f^{-1.4}$. This is the first time that QTN spectroscopy is implemented with an electric antenna length not exceeding the plasma Debye length. As PSP will approach the Sun, the decrease in Debye length is expected to considerably improve the accuracy of the temperature measurements., 17 pages, 7 figures, accepted in ApJS (Parker Solar Probe special issue)

We investigate the solar wind energy flux in the inner heliosphere using 12-day observations around each perihelion of Encounter One (E01), Two (E02), Four (E04), and Five (E05) of Parker Solar Probe (PSP), respectively, with a minimum heliocentric distance of 27.8 solar radii ($R_\odot{}$). Energy flux was calculated based on electron parameters (density $n_e$, core electron temperature $T_{c}$, and suprathermal electron temperature $T_{h}$) obtained from the simplified analysis of the plasma quasi-thermal noise (QTN) spectrum measured by RFS/FIELDS and the bulk proton parameters (bulk speed $V_p$ and temperature $T_p$) measured by the Faraday Cup onboard PSP, SPC/SWEAP. Combining observations from E01, E02, E04, and E05, the averaged energy flux value normalized to 1 $R_\odot{}$ plus the energy necessary to overcome the solar gravitation ($W_{R_\odot{}}$) is about 70$\pm$14 $W m^{-2}$, which is similar to the average value (79$\pm$18 $W m^{-2}$) derived by Le Chat et al from 24-year observations by Helios, Ulysses, and Wind at various distances and heliolatitudes. It is remarkable that the distributions of $W_{R_\odot{}}$ are nearly symmetrical and well fitted by Gaussians, much more so than at 1 AU, which may imply that the small heliocentric distance limits the interactions with transient plasma structures., Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures and Astronomy & Astrophysics Accepted

Quasi-thermal noise spectroscopy is an efficient tool for measuring in situ macroscopic plasma properties in space, using a passive wave receiver at the ports of an electric antenna. This technique was pioneered on spinning spacecraft carrying very long dipole antennas in the interplanetary medium - like ISEE-3 and Ulysses - whose geometry approached a “theoretician's dream". The technique has been extended to other instruments in various types of plasmas onboard different spacecraft and will be implemented on several missions in the near future. Such extensions require different theoretical modelizations, involving magnetized, drifting or dusty plasmas with various particle velocity distributions, and antennas being shorter, biased or made of unequal wires. We give new analytical approximations of the plasma quasi-thermal noise (QTN), and study how the constraints of the real world in space can (or cannot) be compatible with plasma detection by QTN spectroscopy. We consider applications to the missions Wind, Cassini, Bepi-Colombo, Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe.

International audience; Despite their variety and complexity, living organisms obey simple scaling laws due to the universality of the laws of physics. In the present paper, we study the scaling between maximum speed and size, from bacteria to the largest mammals. While the preferred speed has been widely studied in the framework of Newtonian mechanics, the maximum speed has rarely attracted the interest of physicists, despite its remarkable scaling property; it is roughly proportional to length throughout nearly the whole range of running and swimming organisms. We propose a simple order-of-magnitude interpretation of this ubiquitous relationship, based on physical properties shared by life forms of very different body structure and varying by more than 20 orders of magnitude in body mass. (C) 2015 American Association of Physics Teachers.

International audience

Space plasmas are essentially collisionless systems out of thermal equilibrium, where enhanced populations of suprathermal particles are observed. The typical distributions are generally better described by kappa distributions than by Maxwellians, especially for electrons, which has serious consequences since their small electron mass makes them major agents for plasma energy transport. This chapter presents suprathermal electrons and their critical role in the heating and acceleration of plasmas in several important space and astrophysical contexts. They affect the generation of the ambipolar electric field and contribute to the collisionless electron heat flux. In the solar corona, such electrons make a dominant contribution to the electron heat flux and play an important role in the coronal heating energy budget. They also support large ambipolar electric fields along open magnetic flux tubes in solar/stellar coronae and in planetary ionospheres and thus contribute significantly to solar and stellar wind acceleration, outflow from planetary ionospheres, and possibly even exoplanetary atmospheric loss. For the Earth’s environment, it has been demonstrated that suprathermal electrons play a controlling role in the plasmasphere thermal structure, have a major effect on ionospheric outflows, and control the electron temperature and consequently the topside ionospheric scale height through the generation of heat flux.

The charge released by impact ionization of fast dust grains impinging on spacecraft is at the basis of a well-known technique for dust detection by wave instruments. Since most of the impact charges are recollected by the spacecraft, monopole antennas generally detect a much greater signal than dipoles. This is illustrated by comparing dust signals in monopole and dipole mode on different spacecraft and environments. It explains the weak sensitivity of Wind/WAVES dipole antennas for dust detection, so that it is not surprising that this instrument did not detect the interplanetary nanodust discovered by STEREO/WAVES. We propose an interpretation of the Wind dust data, elsewhere discussed by Malaspina et al. (2014), which explains the observed pulse amplitude and polarity for interstellar dust impacts, as well as the non-detection of nanodust. This proposed mechanism might be the dominant dust detection mechanism by some wave instruments using dipole antennas., Accepted for publication in Geophys. Res. Lett. (April 9, 2014)

[1] We analyze the large-scale structures of electrons in Saturn's inner magnetosphere equatorial plane, from 2.8 to about 10 Saturnian radii (RS). The electron total density and core temperature are obtained using the quasi-thermal noise spectroscopy method, based on the HF power spectra measurements acquired with the Cassini/Radio and Plasma Wave Science instrument around the local plasma frequency from July 2004 to May 2012. The results reveal the existence of two regions. An inner region around Enceladus orbit (3–5 RS) is characterized by a high variability of the electron density, an increasing core temperature profile (∝ R2.7), and a strong correlation of the density and temperature. An outer region, beyond 5 RS, is characterized by a decrease of the density (∝ R−4.19) and a slight decrease of the core temperature with distance from the planet (∝ R−0.3). The electron temperature profile is consistent with heating by thermalization of the electrons with the ions in the inner region and with thermalization balanced by cooling due to outward radial transport in the outer region. In the outer region, we identify a local time asymmetry of both the density and the temperature: higher core temperatures are observed in the nightside while higher densities are observed in the dayside. We finally estimate the plasma scale height from a few orbits at quasi-constant altitude. We find that it varies as R1.53 inside Dione's orbit and displays a bell-shaped profile between 7 and 9 RS, consistent with the maximum in the corotation lag previously observed.

We propose to formally extend the notion of specific tension, i.e. force per cross-sectional area—classically used for muscles, to quantify forces in molecular motors exerting various biological functions. In doing so, we review and compare the maximum tensions exerted by about 265 biological motors operated by about 150 species of different taxonomic groups. The motors considered range from single molecules and motile appendages of microorganisms to whole muscles of large animals. We show that specific tensions exerted by molecular and non-molecular motors follow similar statistical distributions, with in particular, similar medians and (logarithmic) means. Over the 1019mass (M) range of the cell or body from which the motors are extracted, their specific tensions vary asMαwithαnot significantly different from zero. The typical specific tension found in most motors is about 200 kPa, which generalizes to individual molecular motors and microorganisms a classical property of macroscopic muscles. We propose a basic order-of-magnitude interpretation of this result.

International audience; NASA’s Solar Probe Plus (SPP) mission will make the first in situ measurements of the solar corona and the birthplace of the solar wind. The FIELDS instrument suite on SPP will make direct measurements of electric and magnetic fields, the properties of in situ plasma waves, electron density and temperature profiles, and interplanetary radio emissions, amongst other things. Here, we describe the scientific objectives targeted by the SPP/FIELDS instrument, the instrument design itself, and the instrument concept of operations and planned data products.

Quasi-thermal noise (QTN) spectroscopy is an accurate technique for in situ measurements of electron density and temperature in space plasmas. A QTN spectrum is determined by plasma and antenna properties. On STEREO/WAVES, since the antennas are relatively short and thick, the QTN spectrum is dominated by electron shot noise, especially at low frequencies, which reduces the accuracy of the method. Here we use the STEREO low-frequency receiver, proton density measured by Plasma and Suprathermal Ion Composition instrument, and a QTN and shot noise models to provide electron temperature data from both STEREO A and B spacecraft. This derivation is important since no reliable measurements of electron temperature exist on board these spacecraft. We compare the results of our analysis with the electron temperature provided by the Wind spacecraft during the period when Wind and STEREO B were close to each other. The comparison shows that our technique is reliable when results are integrated on a time scale of the order of 50 to 60 min.

High rate sampling detectors measuring the potential difference between the main body and boom antennas of interplanetary spacecraft have been shown to be efficient means to measure the voltage pulses induced by nano dust impacts on the spacecraft body itself (see Meyer-Vernet et al, Solar Phys. 256, 463 (2009)). However, rough estimates of the free charge liberated in post impact expanding plasma cloud indicate that the cloud's own internal electrostatic field is too weak to account for measured pulses as the ones from the TDS instrument on the STEREO spacecraft frequently exceeding 0.1 V/m. In this paper we argue that the detected pulses are not a direct measure of the potential structure of the plasma cloud, but are rather the consequence of a transitional interruption of the photoelectron return current towards the portion of the antenna located within the expanding cloud.

The distribution of dust in the ecliptic plane between 0.96 and 1.04 AU has been inferred from impacts on the two STEREO spacecraft through observation of secondary particle trails and unexpected off-points in the Heliospheric Imager (HI) cameras. This study made use of analysis carried out by members of a distributed web-based project, Solar Stormwatch. A comparison between observations of the brightest particle trails and a survey of fainter trails shows consistent distributions. While there is no obvious correlation between this distribution and the occurrence of individual meteor streams at Earth, there are some broad longitudinal features in these distributions that are also observed in sources of the sporadic meteor population. The asymmetry in the number of trails seen by each spacecraft and the fact that there are many more unexpected off-points in the HI-B than in HI-A, indicates that the majority of impacts are coming from the apex direction. For impacts causing off-points in the HI-B camera these dust particles are estimated to have masses in excess of 10-17 kg with radii exceeding 0.1 {\mu}m. For off-points observed in the HI-A images, which can only have been caused by particles travelling from the anti-apex direction, the distribution is consistent with that of secondary 'storm' trails observed by HI-B, providing evidence that these trails also result from impacts with primary particles from an anti-apex source. It is apparent that the differential mass index of particles from the apex direction is consistently above 2. This indicates that the majority of the mass is within the smaller particles of this population. In contrast, the differential mass index of particles from the anti-apex direction (causing off-points in HI-A) is consistently below 2, indicating that the majority of the mass is to be found in larger particles of this distribution.

The transport of energy in space plasmas, especially in the solar wind, is far from being understood. Measuring the temperature of the electrons and their non-thermal properties is essential to understand the transport properties in collisionless plasmas. Quasi-thermal noise spectroscopy is a reliable tool for measuring the electron temperature accurately since it is less sensitive to the spacecraft perturbations than particle detectors. We apply this method to Ulysses radio data obtained during the first pole-to-pole fast latitude scan in the high-speed solar wind, using a kappa function to describe the electron velocity distribution. We deduce the variations with heliocentric distance between 1.5 and 2.3 AU in the fast solar wind at high latitude in terms of three fitting parameters: the electron density varies as n e∝R −1.96±0.08, the electron temperature as T e∝R −0.53±0.15, and the kappa index of the distribution remains constant at κ=2.0±0.2. These observations agree with the predictions of the exospheric theory.

The transport of energy in space plasmas, especially in the solar wind, is far from being understood. Electrons are expected to play a major role for energy transport. Therefore, measuring accurately the temperature of the electrons and their non-thermal properties is essential to understand the transport properties of plasmas in non-local thermodynamic equilibrium. Quasi-thermal noise spectroscopy is a reliable tool for measuring in situ the electron temperature accurately since it is less sensitive to the spacecraft perturbations than particle detectors. This method uses a sensitive radio receiver connected to dipole antennas to measure the electrostatic fluctuations produced by the motion of charged particles in the surrounding plasma. This method has been successfully implemented on a number of spacecraft in various space plasmas. Spacecraft such as ISEE3/ICE, Ulysses, Wind, and STEREO have used or are still using quasi-thermal noise spectroscopy to measure the electron properties in the solar wind, a cometary trail, and the Jovian environment; while IMAGE used this method to study Earth's magnetosphere, and Cassini continuously uses quasi-thermal noise spectroscopy in Saturn's magnetosphere.

New measurements using radio and plasma-wave instruments in interplanetary space have shown that nanometer-scale dust, or nanodust, is a significant contributor to the total mass in interplanetary space. Better measurements of nanodust will allow us to determine where it comes from and the extent to which it interacts with the solar wind. When one of these nanodust grains impacts a spacecraft, it creates an expanding plasma cloud, which perturbs the photoelectron currents. This leads to a voltage pulse between the spacecraft body and the antenna. Nanodust has a high charge/mass ratio, and therefore can be accelerated by the interplanetary magnetic field to speeds up to the speed of the solar wind: significantly faster than the Keplerian orbital speeds of heavier dust. The amplitude of the signal induced by a dust grain grows much more strongly with speed than with mass of the dust particle. As a result, nanodust can produce a strong signal, despite their low mass. The WAVES instruments on the twin Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory spacecraft have observed interplanetary nanodust particles since shortly after their launch in 2006. After describing a new and improved analysis of the last five years of STEREO/WAVES Low Frequency Receiver data, a statistical survey of the nanodust characteristics, namely the rise time of the pulse voltage and the flux of nanodust, is presented. Agreement with previous measurements and interplanetary dust models is shown. The temporal variations of the nanodust flux are also discussed., Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, 1 table

Accepted: 2006-01-29, 資料番号: SA1000607000

Nanodust grains of a few nanometers in size are produced near the Sun by collisional breakup of larger grains and picked up by the magnetized solar wind. They have so far been detected at 1 AU by only the two STEREO spacecraft. Here we analyze the spectra measured by the radio and plasma wave instrument onboard Cassini during the cruise phase close to Earth orbit; they exhibit bursty signatures similar to those observed by the same instrument in association with nanodust stream impacts on Cassini near Jupiter. The observed wave level and spectral shape reveal impacts of nanoparticles at about 300 km/s, with an average flux compatible with that observed by the radio and plasma wave instrument onboard STEREO and with the interplanetary flux models.

Cosmic dust particles are small solid objects observed in the solar planetary system and in many astronomical objects like the surrounding of stars, the interstellar and even the intergalactic medium. In the solar system the dust is best observed and most often found within the region of the orbits of terrestrial planets where the dust interactions and dynamics are observed directly from spacecraft. Dust is observed in space near Earth and also enters the atmosphere of the Earth where it takes part in physical and chemical processes. Hence space offers a laboratory to study dust plasma interactions and dust dynamics. A recent example is the observation of nanodust of sizes smaller than 10 nm. We outline the theoretical considerations on which our knowledge of dust electric charges in space plasmas are founded. We discuss the dynamics of the dust particles and show how the small charged particles are accelerated by the solar wind that carries a magnetic field. Finally, as examples for the space observation of cosmic dust interactions, we describe the first detection of fast nanodust in the solar wind near Earth orbit and the first bi-static observations of PMSE, the radar echoes that are observed in the Earth ionosphere in the presence of charged dust.

The velocity distributions observed in space have too many fast particles, by Maxwell's standards. This ubiquitous property raises doubts about the validity of models based on a set of fluid equations whose closure requires the distributions to be nearly Maxwellian. I discuss here two generic cases: bound structures and winds. Near rapidly rotating magnetised planets, particles channelled along co-rotating magnetic field lines are acted on by the field-aligned component of the centrifugal force, which exceeds the gravitational attraction beyond a few planetary radii. With dipolar magnetic fields, this tends to trap particles near the equator and produce torus-shaped structures, whereas gravitational confinement occurs closer to the planet. These confining forces act as high-pass filters for particle speeds, so that the temperatures are rising with distance from the potential wells, if the velocity distributions are not Maxwellian — in sharp contrast to classical isothermal equilibrium; and the density profiles fall off less steeply than a Gaussian — just as the velocity distributions fall off less steeply than a Maxwellian. While these bound structures are shaped along closed magnetic field lines, winds can blow along open field lines. A suprathermal tail in the electron velocity distribution increases the electric field which ensures the balance of ion and electron fluxes, and should thus increase the wind speed above the value predicted by classical hydrodynamic escape.

We present a kinetic collisionless model of the solar wind generalized to take into account the spiral structure of the interplanetary magnetic field. This model, which also includes Kappa velocity distributions, calculates self-consistently the electric potential profile and derives the solar wind speed and the temperatures of the medium. We study how the inclusion of the spiral geometry changes the plasma parameters compared to the case of a radial magnetic field. Whereas the interplanetary electric potential, the wind density and bulk speed are not significantly changed, we show that the electron and proton temperatures are modified; in particular, we find a decrease of the proton temperature and of its anisotropy, and an increase of the electron temperature. We discuss these results and the validity of the model.

The Ulysses spacecraft is reaching high heliolatitudes during the approach to solar maximum. We show preliminary in situ electron observations from the URAP experiment, using thermal noise spectroscopy. This method is especially suited to measure accurately the electron density and thermal temperature. The data acquired in the period June–September 2000 are compared to those obtained at similar heliolatitudes near solar activity minimum and in the ecliptic plane near both solar maximum and minimum.

We use a kinetic collisionless model of the solar wind to calculate the radial variation of the electron temperature and obtain analytical expressions at large radial distances. In order to be compared with Ulysses observations, the model, which initially assumed a radial magnetic field, has been generalized to a spiral magnetic field. We present a preliminary comparison with Ulysses observations in the fast solar wind at high heliospheric latitudes.

The present paper provides the basic principles and analytic expressions of the quasi-thermal noise spectroscopy extended to measure the plasma bulk speed, as a tool for in situ space plasma diagnostics. This method is based on the analysis of the electrostatic field spectrum produced by the quasi-thermal fluctuations of the electrons and by the Doppler- shifted thermal fluctuations of the ions; it requires a sensitive radio receiver connected to an electric wire dipole antenna. Neglecting the plasma bulk speed, the technique has been routinely used in the low-speed solar wind, and it gives accurate measurements of the electron density and core temperature, in addition to estimates of parameters of the hot electron component. The present generalization of the method takes into account the plasma speed and thereby improves the thermal electron temperature diagnostic. The technique, which is relatively immune to spacecraft potential and photoelectron perturbations, is complementary to standard electrostatic analysers. Application to the radio receiver data from the Ulysses spacecraft yields an accurate plasma diagnostic. Comparisons of these results with those deduced from the particle analyser experiment on board Ulysses are presented and discussed.

A simple kinetic model of solar wind ejection is presented. It provides an alternative to the fluid derivation given in most space physics textbooks, and allows one to derive the wind speed from simple principles. This kind of description emphasizes the role of the electrostatic field which is implicit in the fluid point of view. It also illustrates the inadequacy of the classical heat conduction law in space plasmas, and allows one to deal with non-equilibrium velocity distributions, which are ubiquitous there.

We calculate analytically the radial profile of the average electron temperature in the solar wind with a kinetic collisionless model. The electron temperature profile at large distances r is the sum of a term r -4/3 plus a constant, with both terms of the same order of magnitude near r ∼ 1 AU. This result is generic as it is weakly dependent on the particle velocity distributions in the corona. It provides a natural explanation for the observed electron temperature profile near 1 AU, which is in the low or middle part of the range between isothermal and adiabatic behaviors. The r -4/3 term comes from the isotropically distributed electrons confined by the heliospheric electric potential, which is found to have a similar radial variation. The constant term comes from the parallel temperature of the electrons energetic enough to escape. The calculated profile flattens as r increases and tends to be flatter in the high-speed wind. We also give simple explicit expressions for the electron temperature and density at large distances and for the terminal wind velocity as a function of coronal parameters when the electron velocity distribution is a Kappa function, which is close to a Maxwellian with a suprathermal tail.

We have reanalyzed the data acquired by the planetary radio astronomy (PRA) experiment during the passage of Voyager 2 through the outer part of Saturn's G ring, originally published by Aubier et al. (1983. Geophys. Res. Lett. 10, 5–8). This study closely parallels the reanalysis of the Voyager 1 PRA data during the E-ring passage (Meyer-Vernet et al. 1996. Icarus 123, 113–128). The instrument detected dust grain impacts on the spacecraft in a region of ≈1000 km vertical extent around the ring plane with a maximum at ring plane crossing. The signal is mainly produced by grains of radius of a few micrometers. We find a size distribution less steep than the r −6 law inferred for submicrometer grains by Showalter and Cuzzi (1993. Icarus 103, 124–143) from photometric data. These results can be reconciled if the slope of the size distribution flattens above 0.5 μ. Assuming a rough continuity between the distributions deduced from the two data sets and an r − q law for the grains detected by PRA, we infer that the differential power law index q H ≈ 1200/( q − 1) km. When q varies in the range 3.5–2, H varies in the range 500–1200 km and the geometric cross section per unit area is a few times 10 −6 .

We present new in situ solar wind plasma measurements obtained during Ulysses fast transit from the south solar pole to the north one, which took place 1 year before the 1996 sunspot minimum. The data were obtained with the radio receiver of the Unified Radio and Plasma Wave Experiment, using the method of quasi-thermal noise spectroscopy, which is relatively immune to spacecraft potential perturbations and whose density measurements are independent on gain calibrations. We analyze the electron density and the core electron temperature. We deduce their radial profiles in the steady state fast solar wind; southward of 40° latitude, between 1.52 and 2.31 AU, the total electron density varies as n e ∞ r (-2.003±0.015) , while the core temperature varies as T c ∞ r (-064±0.03) . This allows to estimate the interplanetary electrostatic field using a simplified fluid equation. We also study, poleward of 40° (where the variance of both parameters are very low), the histograms of the electron density and core temperature scaled to 1 AU, assuming the above determined radial variation. Each histogram shows a single class of flow with a roughly normal distribution. We find a mean electron density of 2.65 cm -3 in the southern hemisphere which is about 8% larger than in the northern one. The core temperature histogram is centered at a mean of 7.5x10 4 K in the south, and of 7x10 4 K in the north. This small asymmetry may be due to a genuine solar asymmetry between the two hemispheres and/or to a temporal variation since solar activity slightly decreased during the Ulysses exploration.

We present new in situ measurements of solar wind electron density as a function of heliolatitude. The data were obtained on Ulysses during its fast transit from south solar pole to north solar pole, at heliocentric distance about 1.5 AU, near the 1996 solar activity minimum. The density is measured accurately using the method of quasi-thermal noise spectroscopy with the Ulysses radio experiment, at a higher time resolution than the particle analysers on board. At low heliolatitudes (22° S to 21° N) the histogram of our data shows three main classes of flows with densities centered at 3.5, 7, and 12 cm-3, close to the values previously found by near-ecliptic space probes, in the region where fast coronal hole wind alternates with slower streamer belt wind. Poleward of 22° latitude where Ulysses encountered fast wind coming from coronal holes, the histogram of our data shows a single class of flow centered at 2.9 cm-3 with a roughly normal distribution. We find a density nearly independent of latitude, with the mean density from the south coronal hole 10% larger than that from the north, which may stem from a genuine north/south asymmetry and/or from the small decrease in solar activity during the time of the observations. We finally compare the data with some analytical models.

International audience; The measurement of the solar wind electron temperature in the unexplored region between 1 and 45 Rs is of prime importance for understanding the solar wind acceleration. Solar Orbiter's location, combined with the fact that the spacecraft will nearly co-rotate with the sun on some portions of its orbit, will furnish observations placing constraints on solar wind models. We discuss the implementation of the plasma thermal noise analysis for the Solar Orbiter, in order to get accurate measurements of the total electron density and electron temperature and to correct the spacecraft charging effects which affect the electron analyzers.

In very-low energy plasmas, the size of nanograins is comparable to the distance (the so-called Landau length) at which the interaction energy of two electrons equals their thermal energy. In that case, the grain's polarization induced by approaching charged particles increases their fluxes and reduces the charging time scales. Furthermore, for grains of radius smaller than the Landau length, the electric charge no longer decreases linearly with size, but has a most probable equilibrium value close to one electron charge. We give analytical results that can be used for nanograins in cold dense planetary environments of the outer solar system. Application to the nanodust observed in the plume of Saturn's moon Enceladus shows that most grains of radius about 1 nm should carry one electron, whereas an appreciable fraction of them are positively charged by ion impacts. The corresponding electrostatic stresses should destroy smaller grains, which anyway may not exist as crystals since their number of molecules is close to the minimum required for crystallization., Comment: Revised version of paper submitted to Icarus

New measurements using radio and plasma-wave instruments in interplanetary space have shown that nanometer-scale dust, or nanodust, is a significant contributor to the total mass in interplanetary space. Better measurements of nanodust will allow us to determine where it comes from and the extent to which it interacts with the solar wind. When one of these nanodust grains impacts a spacecraft, it creates an expanding plasma cloud, which perturbs the photoelectron currents. This leads to a voltage pulse between the spacecraft body and the antenna. Nanodust has a high charge/mass ratio, and therefore can be accelerated by the interplanetary magnetic field to speeds up to the speed of the solar wind: significantly faster than the Keplerian orbital speeds of heavier dust. The amplitude of the signal induced by a dust grain grows much more strongly with speed than with mass of the dust particle. As a result, nanodust can produce a strong signal, despite their low mass. The WAVES instruments on the twin Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory spacecraft have observed interplanetary nanodust particles since shortly after their launch in 2006. After describing a new and improved analysis of the last five years of STEREO/WAVES Low Frequency Receiver data, a statistical survey of the nanodust characteristics, namely the rise time of the pulse voltage and the flux of nanodust, is presented. Agreement with previous measurements and interplanetary dust models is shown. The temporal variations of the nanodust flux are also discussed., Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures

The possibility of a wire dipole antenna to study the characteristics of dust grains is examined. Charged dust grains passing by the antenna induce an electric potential change for the time of the flyby. These “waveforms” are studied as a function of the characteristics of the dust grain (its charge and velocity vector) and the plasma parameters. The thermal noise level due to flyby, emission, and impacts of the ambient plasma electrons is calculated and compared with the magnitude of the dust signal. Qualitative analysis yields a minimum detectable grain size, the minimum antenna sensitivity required, and the number of detectable events per time unit for cometary, planetary, and interplanetary environments. We call this recently proposed dust-detection technique Radio Dust Analyzer (RDA).

We have reanalyzed the data acquired by the planetary radioastronomy (PRA) experiment during the passage of Voyager 1 through Saturn's E ring. Depending on the distance from the ring plane, the instrument detected (i) dust grain impacts on the spacecraft and/or (ii) plasma waves or noise. The signal produced by the dust can be recognized by its power spectrum. It is dominant in a region of ≈12,000 km vertical extent around the ring plane, and has a maximum at roughly 5000 km southward of equator (at 6.1 R S from Saturn). Assuming that the grain concentration is given by the model of Showalter et al. (Showalter, M. R., J. N. Cuzzi, and S. M. Larson 1991. Icarus 94, 451–473) derived from optical observations, we infer from the mean PRA voltage and from the histogram of the data that the particles have a mean radius r ≈ 1 μm and a narrow size distribution of fractional dispersion between 10 and 30%. These values agree with the above model. We have also investigated the ring thickness. The PRA signal has a full vertical width at half-maximum of ≈8000 km, which is 2.3 times less than that given by the optical model. Since the signal produced by the dust varies strongly with the grain size (as r 6 ), our measurements can be made compatible with the optical observations if the particle mean size decreases slightly with vertical distance, by about 10% over 4000 km.

We propose a novel method to measure in situ the bulk speed of a space plasma. It is based on the analysis of the electrostatic field spectrum produced by the Doppler-shifted thermal fluctuations of the plasma ions which can be measured with a sensitive receiver at the terminals of a passive electric antenna. We present a preliminary application in the solar wind using the data acquired in the ecliptic plane by the Unified Radio and Plasma experiment (URAP) on the Ulysses spacecraft. This should allow us to extend to the bulk speed the method of thermal noise spectroscopy which already gives an accurate in situ diagnosis of the electron density and bulk temperature. This method can be complementary to classical electrostatic analyzers for both interplanetary and magnetospheric studies.

Most in situ measurements of cosmic dust have been carried out with dedicated dust instruments. However, dust particles can also be detected with radio and plasma wave instruments. The high velocity impact of a dust particle generates a small crater on the spacecraft, and the dust particle and the crater material are vaporised and partly ionised. The resulting electric charge can be detected with plasma instruments designed to measure electric waves. Since 2007 the STEREO/WAVES instrument has recorded a large number of events due to dust impacts. Here we will concentrate on the study of those impacts produced by dust grains originating from the local interstellar cloud. We present these fluxes during five years of the STEREO mission. Based on model calculations, we determine the direction of arrival of interstellar dust. We find that the interstellar dust direction of arrival is ∼260∘, in agreement with previous studies.

We present a detailed analysis of the set of radio spectra acquired during the Ulysses spacecraft passage through the outer part of the Io plasma torus (at ∼8 R j ). Since Ulysses is the first spacecraft to explore the torus far from the equator and the onboard plasma analyzers were shut off, these wave data are the only ones providing an in situ plasma diagnostics outside the equatorial region. We present here two main results. First, by comparing the observed spin modulation of the signal measured between electron gyroharmonics to the theoretical modulation for electrostatic waves propagating roughly normal to B, we deduce experimental dispersion curves for these waves. These curves are very similar to Bernstein dispersion curves in a quasi-thermal plasma. Second, by fitting these theoretical dispersion relations to the experimental ones, we are able to deduce the core electron temperature with about 20% uncertainty when the density is measured independently. Otherwise, we can get a rough evaluation of both the density and the temperature. The corresponding latitudinal variation of these parameters is analyzed in a related paper (N. Meyer-Vernet, M. Moncuquet, and S. Hoang, 1995).

We present in situ measurements of electron parameters as a function of latitude in the Io plasma torus, deduced from an extended analysis of the radio and plasma wave data acquired on board Ulysses. We find that the density and temperature are anti-correlated and obey an approximate polytrope law Te ∝ 1/ n e . We interpret this result with a simple model based on velocity filtration by the potential which confines the particles to the equator. In the absence of local thermal equilibrium, suprathermal particles overcome more easily the potential; thus the temperature increases with latitude in anticorrelation with the density, which decreases less steeply than the Gaussian corresponding to equilibrium. This explains the observed polytrope relation, and the calculated densities fit quite well the measured density profile. These results illustrate in the Io torus a general behavior of low-density inhomogeneous plasmas, anticipated by J. D. Scudder (1992, Astrophys. J. 398, 299-319).

High rate sampling detectors measuring the potential difference between the main body and the boom antennas of interplanetary spacecraft have been shown to be an efficient means to detect impacts of small dust grains in the nanometer size range (see Meyer-Vernet et al., Solar Physics, 256, 463-474, 2009 and Zaslavsky et al., J. Geophys. Res., 117, 05102, 2012). Rough estimates of the free charge Q in the post impact generated plasma cloud indicate that the cloud's own internal electrostatic field is far too weak to rise the antenna's potential by the observed values. We solve this issue by showing that the cloud's internal field is nevertheless strong enough to transitionally interrupt the photoelectron return current towards the portion of the antenna finding itself within the a critical distance RC ∝ Q1/3 from the impact point. The antenna then steadily increases its positive charge (and its electrostatic potential with respect to the satellite's main body) during a time interval of the order of the inverse of the photoelectron plasma frequency. In previous works we interpreted RC as the final radius of the expanding cloud. Here we propose that RC is the distance beyond which the cloud's field is efficiently screened by the ambient electrons.

[1] We analyze dust impacts recorded by the S/WAVES radio instrument onboard the two STEREO spacecraft near 1 A.U. during the period 2007–2010. The impact of a dust particle on a spacecraft produces a plasma cloud whose associated electric field can be detected by on-board electric antennas. For this study we use the electric potential time series recorded by the waveform sampler of the instrument. The high time resolution and long sampling times of this measurement enable us to deduce considerably more information than in previous studies based on the dynamic power spectra provided by the same instrument or by radio instruments onboard other spacecraft. The large detection area compared to conventional dust detectors provides flux data with a better statistics. We show that the dust-generated signals are of two kinds, corresponding to impacts of dust from distinctly different mass ranges. We propose calibration formulas for these signals and show that we are able to use S/WAVES as a dust detector with convincing results both in the nanometer and micrometer size ranges. In the latter, the orbital motion of the spacecraft enables us to distinguish between interstellar and interplanetary dust components. Our measurements cover the mass intervals ∼10−22–10−20 kg and ∼10−17 − 5 × 10−16 kg. The flux of the larger dust agrees with measurements of other instruments on different spacecraft.

Nano and micrometre sized dust particles travelling through the heliosphere at several hundreds of km?s?1 have been repeatedly detected by interplanetary spacecraft. When such fast moving dust particles hit a solid target in space, an expanding plasma cloud is formed through the vaporization and ionization of the dust particles itself and part of the target material at and near the impact point. Immediately after the impact the small and dense cloud is dominated by collisions and the expansion can be described by fluid equations. However, once the cloud has reached ?m dimensions, the plasma may turn collisionless and a kinetic description is required to describe the subsequent expansion. In this paper we explore the late and possibly collisionless spherically symmetric unconstrained expansion of a single ionized ion?electron plasma using N-body simulations. Given the strong uncertainties concerning the early hydrodynamic expansion, we assume that at the time of the transition to the collisionless regime the cloud density and temperature are spatially uniform. We also neglect the role of the ambient plasma. This is a reasonable assumption as long as the cloud density is substantially higher than the ambient plasma density. In the case of clouds generated by fast interplanetary dust grains hitting a solid target, some 107 electrons and ions are liberated and the in vacuum approximation is acceptable up to meter order cloud dimensions. As such a cloud can be estimated to become collisionless when its radius has reached ?m order dimensions, both the collisionless approximation and the in vacuum approximation are expected to hold during a long lasting phase as the cloud grows by a factor 106. With these assumptions, we find that the transition from the collisional to the collisionless regime could occur when the electron Debye length ?D within the cloud is much smaller than the cloud radius R0, i.e. ?????D/R0???1. This implies a quasi-neutral expansion regime where the radial electron and ion density profiles are equal through most of the cloud except at the cloud?vacuum interface. The consequence of ? being much smaller than unity implies that the electrostatic fields within a cloud generated by a dust impact on a neutral target is ?100 times weaker than in the case of grains hitting a spacecraft, where the positive potential of the target is strong enough to strip-off all the electrons from the expanding cloud leading to a ?Coulomb explosion? like regime (e.g. Peano et al 2007 Phys. Plasmas \bf 14 056704).

The solar-wind energy flux measured near the ecliptic is known to be independent of the solar-wind speed. Using plasma data from Helios, Ulysses, and Wind covering a large range of latitudes and time, we show that the solar-wind energy flux is independent of the solar-wind speed and latitude within 10%, and that this quantity varies weakly over the solar cycle. In other words the energy flux appears as a global solar constant. We also show that the very high speed solar-wind (VSW > 700 km/s) has the same mean energy flux as the slower wind (VSW < 700 km/s), but with a different histogram. We use this result to deduce a relation between the solar-wind speed and density, which formalizes the anti-correlation between these quantities., 12 pages, 5 figures

Nano dust in the solar system: its formation in the solar system dust cloud.- Dynamical and compositional properties of Jovian and Saturnian stream particles.- Nano dust detection near planets and near Earth orbit with plasma wave measurements.- Nano dust measurement with the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer.- Nano dust dynamics in the interplanetary medium.- Dust charge estimates from large particle models and its extrapolation to nano scales.- Growth mechanism and singular phenomena of nanoparticles in view of the current solar System.- Nano dust properties derived from interstellar medium observations and their implications for nanoparticles in the solar system.- Erosion processes affecting dust grains.- Interactions of nano dust: x-ray emission and charge exchange.- Summary & Discussion.