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Register a new userIon-scale current structures in Short Large-Amplitude Magnetic Structures
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We investigate electric current structures in Short Large-Amplitude Magnetic Structures (SLAMS) in the terrestrial ion foreshock region observed by the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission. The structures with intense currents (|J|~1 {mu}A/m^2) have scale lengths comparable to the local ion inertial length (di). One current structure type is a current sheet due to the magnetic field rotation of the SLAMS, and a subset of these current sheets can exhibit reconnection features including the electron outflow jet and X-line-type magnetic topology. The di-scale current sheet near the edge of a SLAMS propagates much more slowly than the overall SLAMS, suggesting that it may result from compression. The current structures also exist as magnetosonic whistler waves with fci < f < flh, where fci and flh are the ion cyclotron frequency and the lower-hybrid frequency, respectively. The field rotations in the current sheets and whistler waves generate comparable |J| and energy conversion rates. Electron heating is clearly observed in one whistler packet embedded in a larger-scale current sheet of the SLAMS, where the parallel electric field and the curvature drift opposite to the electric field energize electrons. The results give insight about the thin current structure generation and energy conversion at thin current structures in the shock transition region.
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Collisionless space plasma turbulence can generate reconnecting thin current sheets as suggested by recent results of numerical magnetohydrodynamic simulations. The MMS mission provides the first serious opportunity to check if small ion-electron-scale reconnection, generated by turbulence, resembles the reconnection events frequently observed in the magnetotail or at the magnetopause. Here we investigate field and particle observations obtained by the MMS fleet in the turbulent terrestrial magnetosheath behind quasi-parallel bow shock geometry. We observe multiple small-scale current sheets during the event and present a detailed look of one of the detected structures. The emergence of thin current sheets can lead to electron scale structures where ions are demagnetized. Within the selected structure we see signatures of ion demagnetization, electron jets, electron heating and agyrotropy suggesting that MMS spacecraft observe reconnection at these scales.
Switchbacks are widely acknowledged phenomena observed by the Parker Solar Probe and appear to occur in patches. Previous studies focused on the fluctuations at the magnetic reversals. However, the nature of the fluctuations inside the switchbacks remains unknown. Here we utilize the magnetic field data and plasma data measured by the Parker Solar Probe in the first four encounters. We investigate the fluctuations in the switchback intervals of 100 s with BR>0 at every instant and compare them to the fluctuations in the nonswitchback intervals of 100 s with theta_RB>160o at every instant. We calculate normalized cross-helicity sigma_c, normalized residual energy sigma_r, correlation coefficient C_vb between dvA and dv, Alfven ratio rA, and the amplitude of magnetic and kinetic fluctuations. We find that the switchback intervals exhibit a distribution of sigma_c similar with the nonswitchback intervals. However, the rA of switchback intervals is around 0.35, while the nonswitchback intervals have rA around 0.65, indicating the fluctuations in the switchbacks are more magnetically dominated. We also find that the distribution pattern of pixel average amplitude of both dvA and dv of switchback intervals in the C_vb-sigma_r plane show a vertical stripe feature at C_vb>0.8, illustrating the possible magnetically dominant magnetic-velocity alignment structure. These results will help us to understand the nature and the formation of the switchback turbulence.
Observations of solar wind turbulence indicate the existence of multi-scale pressure-balanced structures (PBSs) in the solar wind. In this work, we conduct a numerical simulation to investigate multi-scale PBSs and in particular their formation in compressive MHD turbulence. By the use of a higher order Godunov code Athena,a driven compressible turbulence with an imposed uniform guide field is simulated. The simulation results show that both the magnetic pressure and the thermal pressure exhibit a turbulent spectrum with a Kolmogorov-like power law, and that in many regions of the simulation domain they are anti-correlated. The computed wavelet cross-coherence spectrum of the magnetic pressure and the thermal pressure, as well as their space series, indicate the existence of multi-scale PBSs, with the small PBSs being embedded in the large ones. These multi-scale PBSs are likely to be related with the highly oblique-propagating slow-mode waves, as the traced multi-scale PBS is found to be traveling in a certain direction at a speed consistent with that predicted theoretically for a slow-mode wave propagating in the same direction.
The electrostatic screening length predicted by Debye-Huckel theory decreases with increasing ionic strength, but recent experiments have found that the screening length can instead increase in concentrated electrolytes. This phenomenon, referred to as underscreening, is believed to result from ion-ion correlations and short-range forces such as excluded volume interactions among ions. We use Brownian Dynamics to simulate a version of the Restrictive Primitive Model for electrolytes over a wide range of ion concentrations, ionic strengths, and ion excluded volume radii for binary electrolytes. We measure the decay of the charge-charge correlation among ions in the bulk, and compare it against scaling trends found experimentally and determined in certain weak coupling theories of ion-ion correlation. Moreover, we find that additional large scale ion structures emerge at high concentrations. In this regime, the frequency of oscillations computed from the charge-charge correlation function is not dominated by electrostatic interactions but rather by excluded volume interactions and with oscillation periods on the order of the ion diameter. We also find that the nearest neighbor correlation of ions sharing the same charge transitions from negative at small concentrations to positive at high concentrations, representing the formation of small, like-charge ion clusters. We conclude that the increase in local charge density due to the formation of these clusters and the topological constraints of macroscopic charged surfaces can help explain the degree of underscreening observed experimentally.
A variety of kinetic waves develop in the solar wind. The relationship between these waves and larger-scale structures, such as current sheets and ongoing turbulence remain a topic of investigation. Similarly, the instabilities producing ion-acoustic waves in the solar wind remains an open question. The goals of this paper are to investigate kinetic electrostatic Langmuir and ion-acoustic waves in the solar wind at 0.5 AU and determine whether current sheets and associated streaming instabilities can produce the observed waves. The relationship between these waves and currents is investigated statistically. Solar Orbiters Radio and Plasma Waves instrument suite provides high-resolution snapshots of the fluctuating electric field. The Low Frequency Receiver resolves the waveforms of ion-acoustic waves and the Time Domain Sampler resolves the waveforms of both ion-acoustic and Langmuir waves. Using these waveform data we determine when these waves are observed in relation to current structures in the solar wind, estimated from the background magnetic field. Langmuir and ion-acoustic waves are frequently observed in the solar wind. Ion-acoustic waves are observed about 1% of the time at 0.5 AU. The waves are more likely to be observed in regions of enhanced currents. However, the waves typically do not occur at current structures themselves. The observed currents in the solar wind are too small to drive instability by the relative drift between single ion and electron populations. When multi-component ion and/or electron distributions are present the observed currents may be sufficient for instability. Ion beams are the most plausible source of ion-acoustic waves. The spacecraft potential is confirmed to be a reliable probe of the background electron density by comparing the peak frequencies of Langmuir waves with the plasma frequency calculated from the spacecraft potential.
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