Abstract
This paper extends some previous work on the acceleration of minor ions in the solar wind to include the effects of wave acceleration and heating arising from minor ions interacting via the gyroresonance with ion cyclotron waves. Resonant wave acceleration is made up of two contributions, the first, and generally the more important, is a ‘local’ acceleration which is proportional to the wave power and the number of resonant particles and is also sensitive to the details of the distribution function; while the other contribution is basically ‘fluid dynamic’ in character, arises from the inhomogeneity of the medium and is proportional to the radial gradient of the resonant wave power. Under suitable cir-cumstances both contributions exhibit the feature that heavier ions receive greater acceleration than lighter ones. Also the kinematics of the resonance shows that the resonance wave acceleration switches off above a maximum differential speed, between ions and protons, which increases with increasing ratio of mass to charge. We also examine briefly possible beam instabilities driven by the streaming of minor ions relative to protons.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alazraki, G. and Couturier, P.: 1971,Astron. Astrophys. 13, 380.
Asbridge, J. R., Bame, S. J., Feldman, W. C., and Montgomery, M. D.: 1976,J. Geophys. Res. 81, 2719.
Belcher, J. W.: 1971,Astrophys. J. 168, 509.
Denskat, K. U. and Neubauer, F. M.: 1980, submitted toJ. Geophys. Res.
Dum, C. T., Marsch, E., and Pilipp, W.: 1980,J. Plasma Phys. 23, 91.
Dum, C. T., Marsch, E., and Pilipp, W.: 1981, in preparation.
Dusenbery, P. B. and Hollweg, J. V.: 1981,J. Geophys. Res. 86, 153.
Geiss, J., Hirt, P., and Leutwyler, H.: 1970,Solar Phys. 12, 458.
Goodrich, C. C.: 1978, PhD. Thesis, MIT.
Gurnett, D. A. and Frank, L. A. 1978,J. Geophys. Res. 83, 58.
Gurnett, D. A., Marsch, E., Pilipp, W., Schwenn, R., and Rosenbauer, H.: 1979, J. Geophys. Res.84, 2029.
Hollweg, J. W.: 1973a,Astrophys. J. 181, 547.
Hollweg, J. W.: 1973b,J. Geophys. Res. 78, 3643.
Hollweg, J. W.: 1974,J. Geophys. Res. 79, 1357.
Marsch, E., Mühlhäuser, K.-H., Pilipp, W., Schwenn, R., and Rosenbauer, H.: 1981, inSolar Wind 4, Lecture Notes in Physics, Springer Verlag, in press.
Marsch, E., Mühlhäuser, K.-H., Schwenn, R., Rosenbauer, H., Pilipp, W., and Denskat, K. U.: 1981a, submitted toJ. Geophys. Res.
Marsch, E., Mühlhäuser, K.-H., Rosenbauer, H., Schwenn, R., and Neubauer, F.: 1981b, submitted toJ. Geophys. Res.
McKenzie, J. F., Ip, W.-H., and Axford, W. I.: 1979,Astrophys. Space Sci. 64, 183.
Neugebauer, M.: 1981, submitted toFundamentals of Cosmic Physics.
Schmidt, W. K. H., Rosenbauer, H., Shelley, E. G., and Geiss, J.: 1980,Geophys. Res. Letters 7, 697.
Schwartz, S. J.: 1980,Rev. Geophys. Space Phys. 18, 313.
Tsytovich, V. N.: 1970,Nonlinear Effects in Plasma, Plenum Press, New York, London.
Völk, H. J. and Alpers, W.: 1973,Astrophys. Space Sci. 20, 267.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
McKenzie, J.F., Marsch, E. Resonant wave acceleration of minor ions in the solar wind. Astrophys Space Sci 81, 295–314 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00676154
Received:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00676154