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Plasma in the terrestrial magnetosheath is characterised by very weak particle-particle collisions, so kinetic microinstabilities are thought to be responsible for regulating the thermodynamics of the plasma. By exciting electromagnetic waves, these instabilities redistribute free energy in velocity space, moulding the velocity distribution function (VDF) into a lower energy state. In the high-beta magnetosheath, relatively small perturbations to the VDF can easily excite instabilities compared to in the low-beta inner heliosphere. Since magnetic fields cannot do work on the particles, electric fields mediate energy exchange between the electromagnetic field and the bulk fluid properties of the plasma. We investigate signatures of non-ideal energy conversion associated with turbulent fluctuations in the context of electron and ion temperature anisotropy-beta instabilities, utilising over 24 hours of data spread over 163 distinct intervals of in situ magnetosheath observations from Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS). We find that average energy conversion into fluid flow is enhanced along instability boundaries, suggesting that turbulence is playing a role in how free energy is redistributed in the plasma. The work enables a quantification of the energetics which are associated with the role of kinetic microinstabilities in regulating collisionless plasma thermodynamics. This work provides insight into the open question of how specific plasma processes couple into the turbulent dynamics and ultimately lead to energy dissipation and particle energisation in collisionless plasmas., Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. Submitted for peer review at Astrophysical Journal Letters (ApJL), July 2024

This work aims to characterize precisely and systematically the non-thermal characteristics of the electron Velocity Distribution Function (eVDF) in the solar wind at 1 au using data from the Wind spacecraft. We present a comprehensive statistical analysis of solar wind electrons at 1 au using the electron analyzers of the 3D-Plasma instrument on board Wind. This work uses a sophisticated algorithm developed to analyze and characterize separately the three populations - core, halo and strahl - of the eVDF up to 2 keV. The eVDF data are calibrated using independent electron parameters obtained from the quasi-thermal noise around the electron plasma frequency measured by the Thermal Noise Receiver. The code determines the respective set of total electron, core, halo and strahl parameters through non-linear least-square fits to the measured eVDF, taking properly into account spacecraft charging and other instrumental effects. We use four years, ~ 280000 independent measurements of core, halo and strahl parameters to investigate the statistical properties of these different populations in the solar wind. We discuss the distributions of their respective densities, drift velocities, temperature, and temperature anisotropies as functions of solar wind speed. We also show distributions with solar wind speed of the total density, temperature, temperature anisotropy and heat flux, as well as those of the proton temperature, proton-to-electron temperature ratio, proton and electron beta. Intercorrelations between some of these parameters are also discussed. The present dataset represents the largest, high-precision, collection of electron measurements in the pristine solar wind at 1~AU. It provides a new wealth of information on electron microphysics. Its large volume will enable future statistical studies of parameter combinations and their dependencies under different plasma conditions., Comment: total of 21 pages, 17 figures, 1 appendix and 7 tables

Analysis of model fit results of 15,210 electron velocity distribution functions (VDFs), observed within $\pm$2 hours of 52 interplanetary (IP) shocks by the Wind spacecraft near 1 AU, is presented as the third and final part on electron VDFs near IP shocks. The core electrons and protons dominate in the magnitude and change in the partial-to-total thermal pressure ratio, with the core electrons often gaining as much or more than the protons. Only a moderate positive correlation is observed between the electron temperature and the kinetic energy change across the shock, while weaker, if any, correlations were found with any other macroscopic shock parameter. No VDF parameter correlated with the shock normal angle. The electron VDF evolves from a narrowly peaked core with flaring suprathermal tails in the upstream to either a slightly hotter core with steeper tails or much hotter flattop core with even steeper tails downstream of the weaker and strongest shocks, respectively. Both quasi-static and fluctuating fields are examined as possible mechanisms modifying the VDF but neither is sufficient alone. For instance, flattop VDFs can be generated by nonlinear ion acoustic wave stochastic acceleration (i.e., inelastic collisions) while other work suggested they result from the combination of quasi-static and fluctuating fields. This three-part study shows that not only are these systems not thermodynamic in nature, even kinetic models may require modification to include things like inelastic collision operators to properly model electron VDF evolution across shocks or in the solar wind., Comment: 30 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables, to be submitted to Astrophys. J

A statistical analysis of 15,210 electron velocity distribution function (VDF) fits, observed within $\pm$2 hours of 52 interplanetary (IP) shocks by the $Wind$ spacecraft near 1 AU, is presented. This is the second in a three-part series on electron VDFs near IP shocks. The electron velocity moment statistics for the dense, low energy core, tenuous, hot halo, and field-aligned beam/strahl are a statistically significant list of values illustrated with both histograms and tabular lists for reference and baselines in future work. The beam/strahl fit results in the upstream are currently the closest thing to a proper parameterization of the beam/strahl electron velocity moments in the ambient solar wind. This work will also serve as a 1 AU baseline and reference for missions like $Parker \ Solar \ Probe$ and $Solar \ Orbiter$. The median density, temperature, beta, and temperature anisotropy values for the core(halo)[beam/strahl] components, with subscripts $ec$($eh$)[$eb$], of all fit results respectively are $n{\scriptstyle_{ec(h)[b]}}$ $\sim$ 11.3(0.36)[0.17] $cm^{-3}$, $T{\scriptstyle_{ec(h)[b], tot}}$ $\sim$ 14.6(48.4)[40.2] $eV$, $\beta{\scriptstyle_{ec(h)[b], tot}}$ $\sim$ 0.93(0.11)[0.05], and $\mathcal{A}{\scriptstyle_{ec(h)[b]}}$ $\sim$ 0.98(1.03)[0.93]. The nuanced details of the fitting method and data product description were published in Paper I and the detailed analysis of the results will be shown in Paper III., Comment: 40 pages, 11 figures, 18 tables, to be submitted to Astrophys. J. Suppl

A grand-challenge problem at the forefront of physics is to understand how energy is transported and transformed in plasmas. This fundamental research priority encapsulates the conversion of plasma-flow and electromagnetic energies into particle energy, either as heat or some other form of energisation. The smallest characteristic scales, at which electron dynamics determines the plasma behaviour, are the next frontier in space and astrophysical plasma research. The analysis of astrophysical processes at these scales lies at the heart of the field of electron-astrophysics. Electron scales are the ultimate bottleneck for dissipation of plasma turbulence, which is a fundamental process not understood in the electron-kinetic regime. Since electrons are the most numerous and most mobile plasma species in fully ionised plasmas and are strongly guided by the magnetic field, their thermal properties couple very efficiently to global plasma dynamics and thermodynamics., Comment: White Paper for the Voyage 2050 Long-Term Plan in the ESA Science Programme; 27 pages

We investigate the scattering of strahl electrons by microinstabilities as a mechanism for creating the electron halo in the solar wind. We develop a mathematical framework for the description of electron-driven microinstabilities and discuss the associated physical mechanisms. We find that an instability of the oblique fast-magnetosonic/whistler (FM/W) mode is the best candidate for a microinstability that scatters strahl electrons into the halo. We derive approximate analytic expressions for the FM/W instability threshold in two different $\beta_{\mathrm c}$ regimes, where $\beta_{\mathrm c}$ is the ratio of the core electrons' thermal pressure to the magnetic pressure, and confirm the accuracy of these thresholds through comparison with numerical solutions to the hot-plasma dispersion relation. We find that the strahl-driven oblique FM/W instability creates copious FM/W waves under low-$\beta_{\mathrm c}$ conditions when $U_{0\mathrm s}\gtrsim 3w_{\mathrm c}$, where $U_{0\mathrm s}$ is the strahl speed and $w_{\mathrm c}$ is the thermal speed of the core electrons. These waves have a frequency of about half the local electron gyrofrequency. We also derive an analytic expression for the oblique FM/W instability for $\beta_{\mathrm c}\sim 1$. The comparison of our theoretical results with data from the \emph{Wind} spacecraft confirms the relevance of the oblique FM/W instability for the solar wind. The whistler heat-flux, ion-acoustic heat-flux, kinetic-Alfv\'en-wave heat-flux, and electrostatic electron-beam instabilities cannot fulfill the requirements for self-induced scattering of strahl electrons into the halo. We make predictions for the electron strahl close to the Sun, which will be tested by measurements from \emph{Parker Solar Probe} and \emph{Solar Orbiter}., Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures

Analysis of 15314 electron velocity distribution functions (VDFs) within $\pm$2 hours of 52 interplanetary (IP) shocks observed by the \emph{Wind} spacecraft near 1 AU are introduced. The electron VDFs are fit to the sum of three model functions for the cold dense core, hot tenuous halo, and field-aligned beam/strahl component. The best results were found by modeling the core as either a bi-kappa or a symmetric (or asymmetric) bi-self-similar velocity distribution function, while both the halo and beam/strahl components were best fit to bi-kappa velocity distribution function. This is the first statistical study to show that the core electron distribution is better fit to a self-similar velocity distribution function than a bi-Maxwellian under all conditions. The self-similar distribution deviation from a Maxwellian is a measure of inelasticity in particle scattering from waves and/or turbulence. The range of values defined by the lower and upper quartiles for the kappa exponents are $\kappa{\scriptstyle_{ec}}$ $\sim$ 5.40--10.2 for the core, $\kappa{\scriptstyle_{eh}}$ $\sim$ 3.58--5.34 for the halo, and $\kappa{\scriptstyle_{eb}}$ $\sim$ 3.40--5.16 for the beam/strahl. The lower-to-upper quartile range of symmetric bi-self-similar core exponents are $s{\scriptstyle_{ec}}$ $\sim$ 2.00--2.04, and asymmetric bi-self-similar core exponents are $p{\scriptstyle_{ec}}$ $\sim$ 2.20--4.00 for the parallel exponent, and $q{\scriptstyle_{ec}}$ $\sim$ 2.00--2.46 for the perpendicular exponent. The nuanced details of the fit procedure and description of resulting data product are also presented. The statistics and detailed analysis of the results are presented in Paper II and Paper III of this three-part study., Comment: 35 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables, under review in Astrophys. J. Suppl [updated in response to 2nd round of referee comments]

We study the damping of collisionless Alfv\'enic turbulence by two mechanisms: stochastic heating (whose efficiency depends on the local turbulence amplitude $\delta z_\lambda$) and linear Landau damping (whose efficiency is independent of $\delta z_\lambda$), describing in detail how they affect and are affected by intermittency. The overall efficiency of linear Landau damping is not affected by intermittency in critically balanced turbulence, while stochastic heating is much more efficient in the presence of intermittent turbulence. Moreover, stochastic heating leads to a drop in the scale-dependent kurtosis over a narrow range of scales around the ion gyroscale., Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, accepted to JPP

The Arbitrary Linear Plasma Solver (ALPS) is a parallelised numerical code that solves the dispersion relation in a hot (even relativistic) magnetised plasma with an arbitrary number of particle species with arbitrary gyrotropic equilibrium distribution functions for any direction of wave propagation with respect to the background field. ALPS reads the background momentum distributions as tables of values on a $(p_{\perp},p_{\parallel})$ grid, where $p_{\perp}$ and $p_{\parallel }$ are the momentum coordinates in the directions perpendicular and parallel to the background magnetic field, respectively. We present the mathematical and numerical approach used by ALPS and introduce our algorithms for the handling of poles and the analytic continuation for the Landau contour integral. We then show test calculations of dispersion relations for a selection of stable and unstable configurations in Maxwellian, bi-Maxwellian, $\kappa$-distributed, and J\"uttner-distributed plasmas. These tests demonstrate that ALPS derives reliable plasma dispersion relations. ALPS will make it possible to determine the properties of waves and instabilities in the non-equilibrium plasmas that are frequently found in space, laboratory experiments, and numerical simulations., Comment: 26 pages, 13 figures, submitted

We present a long-duration ($\sim$10 years) statistical analysis of the temperatures, plasma betas, and temperature ratios for the electron, proton, and alpha-particle populations observed by the \emph{Wind} spacecraft near 1 AU. The mean(median) scalar temperatures are $T{\scriptstyle_{e, tot}}$ $=$ 12.2(11.9) eV, $T{\scriptstyle_{p, tot}}$ $=$ 12.7(8.6) eV, and $T{\scriptstyle_{\alpha, tot}}$ $=$ 23.9(10.8) eV. The mean(median) total plasma betas are $\beta{\scriptstyle_{e, tot}}$ $=$ 2.31(1.09), $\beta{\scriptstyle_{p, tot}}$ $=$ 1.79(1.05), and $\beta{\scriptstyle_{\alpha, tot}}$ $=$ 0.17(0.05). The mean(median) temperature ratios are $\left(T{\scriptstyle_{e}}/T{\scriptstyle_{p}}\right){\scriptstyle_{tot}}$ $=$ 1.64(1.27), $\left(T{\scriptstyle_{e}}/T{\scriptstyle_{\alpha}}\right){\scriptstyle_{tot}}$ $=$ 1.24(0.82), and $\left(T{\scriptstyle_{\alpha}}/T{\scriptstyle_{p}}\right){\scriptstyle_{tot}}$ $=$ 2.50(1.94). We also examined these parameters during time intervals that exclude interplanetary (IP) shocks, times within the magnetic obstacles (MOs) of interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs), and times that exclude MOs. The only times that show significant alterations to any of the parameters examined are those during MOs. In fact, the only parameter that does not show a significant change during MOs is the electron temperature. Although each parameter shows a broad range of values, the vast majority are near the median. We also compute particle-particle collision rates and compare to effective wave-particle collision rates. We find that, for reasonable assumptions of wave amplitude and occurrence rates, the effect of wave-particle interactions on the plasma is equal to or greater than the effect of Coulomb collisions. Thus, wave-particle interactions should not be neglected when modeling the solar wind., Comment: 23 pages, 3 figures, 6 tables, submitted to Astrophys. J. Suppl. on Jan. 30, 2018

Magnetohydronamic turbulence is believed to play a crucial role in heating the laboratorial, space, and astrophysical plasmas. However, the precise connection between the turbulent fluctuations and the particle kinetics has not yet been established. Here we present clear evidence of plasma turbulence heating based on diagnosed wave features and proton velocity distributions from solar wind measurements by the Wind spacecraft. For the first time, we can report the simultaneous observation of counter-propagating magnetohydrodynamic waves in the solar wind turbulence. Different from the traditional paradigm with counter-propagating Alfv\'en waves, anti-sunward Alfv\'en waves (AWs) are encountered by sunward slow magnetosonic waves (SMWs) in this new type of solar wind compressible turbulence. The counter-propagating AWs and SWs correspond respectively to the dominant and sub-dominant populations of the imbalanced Els\"asser variables. Nonlinear interactions between the AWs and SMWs are inferred from the non-orthogonality between the possible oscillation direction of one wave and the possible propagation direction of the other. The associated protons are revealed to exhibit bi-directional asymmetric beams in their velocity distributions: sunward beams appearing in short and narrow patterns and anti-sunward broad extended tails. It is suggested that multiple types of wave-particle interactions, i.e., cyclotron and Landau resonances with AWs and SMWs at kinetic scales, are taking place to jointly heat the protons perpendicularly and parallel.

The collisionless dissipation of anisotropic Alfv\'enic turbulence is a promising candidate to solve the solar wind heating problem. Extensive studies examined the kinetic properties of Alfv\'en waves in simple Maxwellian or bi-Maxwellian plasmas. However, the observed electron velocity distribution functions in the solar wind are more complex. In this study, we analyze the properties of kinetic Alfv\'en waves in a plasma with two drifting electron populations. We numerically solve the linearized Maxwell-Vlasov equations and find that the damping rate and the proton-electron energy partition for kinetic Alfv\'en waves are significantly modified in such plasmas, compared to plasmas without electron drifts. We suggest that electron drift is an important factor to take into account when considering the dissipation of Alfv\'enic turbulence in the solar wind or other $\beta \sim 1$ astrophysical plasmas.

An analysis of model fit results of 15,210 electron velocity distribution functions (VDFs), observed within ±2 hr of 52 interplanetary (IP) shocks by the Wind spacecraft near 1 au, is presented as the third and final part on electron VDFs near IP shocks. The core electrons and protons dominate in the magnitude and change in the partialto-total thermal pressure ratio, with the core electrons often gaining as much or more than the protons. Only a moderate positive correlation is observed between the electron temperature and the kinetic energy change across the shock, while weaker, if any, correlations were found with any other macroscopic shock parameter. No VDF parameter correlated with the shock normal angle. The electron VDF evolves from a narrowly peaked core with flaring suprathermal tails in the upstream to either a slightly hotter core with steeper tails or much hotter flattop core with even steeper tails downstream of the weaker and strongest shocks, respectively. Both quasi-static and fluctuating fields are examined as possible mechanisms modifying the VDF, but neither is sufficient alone. For instance, flattop VDFs can be generated by nonlinear ion acoustic wave stochastic acceleration (i.e., inelastic collisions), while other work suggested they result from the combination of quasi-static and fluctuating fields. This three-part study shows that not only are these systems not thermodynamic in nature; even kinetic models may require modification to include things like inelastic collision operators to properly model electron VDF evolution across shocks or in the solar wind.