Abstract
In this work, we have studied the trapping of obliquely propagating (with respect to the ambient magnetic field) weak whistler wave due to inhomogeneity created by 3D kinetic Alfvén wave (KAW) in a magnetized plasma (magnetotail region). The nonlinearity arises due to ponderomotive effects associated with 3D KAW, consequently, the background density gets modified. The weak whistler wave propagating in this modified density gets either trapped or localized. The study has been carried out numerically and semi-analytically. The semi-analytical analysis show that the typical scale size of localized 3D KAW is of the order of ion gyroradius and that of the trapped whistler is even less than that. The relevance of the results is also pointed out in the context of the recent CLUSTER observations in magnetized plasmas where whistler waves have been detected along with coherent ion-scale magnetic structures.
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This work is partially supported by Department of Science and Technology (DST) India, Council of Scientific and industrial Research (CSIR), India, under Grant Sr. No. 221251160, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) under respond program.
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Rai, R.K., Sharma, S., Gaur, N. et al. Trapping and amplification of quasi-longitudinal whistler wave in kinetic Alfvén wave localized structures. Astrophys Space Sci 361, 110 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-016-2695-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-016-2695-2