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Nonlinear dissipation of Alfvén waves

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Abstract

Alfvén waves are generated easily in many cosmic plasmas, but they possess no linear damping mechanism since they are not compressive. The most prominent nonlinear damping occurs when one Alfvén wave decays into another plus a slow magnetosonic wave, or two Alfvén waves combine into one fast magnetosonic wave; the resulting magnetosonic waves can then be dissipated. The nonlinear coupling rates are presented, with special emphasis on the astrophysically important case of sound speed ≪Alfvén speed. Streaming cosmic rays generate Alfvén waves moving in the direction of streaming, but they reabsorb the backward moving waves then produced by wave decay. The possible steady states for this system of cosmic rays and Alfvén waves turn out to be highly restricted.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Astronomy Program and Center for Theoretical Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Md., USA

    Yuan-Chung Chin & Donat G. Wentzel

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  1. Yuan-Chung Chin
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  2. Donat G. Wentzel
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Supported by NSF grant GP-15218.

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Chin, YC., Wentzel, D.G. Nonlinear dissipation of Alfvén waves. Astrophys Space Sci 16, 465–477 (1972). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00642346

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00642346

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