Abstract
Plasma temperature observations in the solar wind at 1 AU show that very low temperatures of electrons and protons appear not only after interplanetary shock waves, but also after solar wind streams. It is generally believed that the region embedded by a fast preceding and a slower following solar wind is expanding. In this way, the plasma inside may become cooler. In this analysis, we use plasma measurements made aboard the VELA and IMP satellites. Due to the limitations of data, we only give a qualitative picture of the possibility that low temperature regions may be given to local expansions of the plasma. In addition, we assume that these regions are not magnetically closed and therefore not thermically isolated, but are open and connected with the hot corona along the interplanetary magnetic field lines. Therefore, these regions are heated from the corona due to the thermal conduction. In this analysis both the theoretically predicted and the experimentally measured conducted electron heat fluxes are considered.
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Geranios, A. Plasma temperature depressions and the open magnetic field-lines model. Astrophys Space Sci 77, 167–178 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00648764
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00648764