At the Earth's magnetopause, the electron transport due to kinetic Alfvén waves(KAWs) is investigated in an ion-scale flux rope by the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission. Clear electron dropout around 90° ...At the Earth's magnetopause, the electron transport due to kinetic Alfvén waves(KAWs) is investigated in an ion-scale flux rope by the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission. Clear electron dropout around 90° pitch angle is observed throughout the flux rope, where intense KAWs are identified. The KAWs can effectively trap electrons by the wave parallel electric field and the magnetic mirror force, allowing electrons to undergo Landau resonance and be transported into more field-aligned directions. The pitch angle range for the trapped electrons is estimated from the wave analysis, which is in good agreement with direct pitch angle measurements of the electron distributions. The newly formed beam-like electron distribution is unstable and excites whistler waves,as revealed in the observations. We suggest that KAWs could be responsible for the plasma depletion inside a flux rope by this transport process, and thus be responsible for the formation of a typical flux rope.展开更多
基金Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos 41474145,41574159,41731070 and 41504114the Frontier Science Foundation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences under Grant No QYZDJ-SSW-JSC028+1 种基金the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences under Grant No XDA15052500the Specialized Research Fund for State Key Laboratories of China
文摘At the Earth's magnetopause, the electron transport due to kinetic Alfvén waves(KAWs) is investigated in an ion-scale flux rope by the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission. Clear electron dropout around 90° pitch angle is observed throughout the flux rope, where intense KAWs are identified. The KAWs can effectively trap electrons by the wave parallel electric field and the magnetic mirror force, allowing electrons to undergo Landau resonance and be transported into more field-aligned directions. The pitch angle range for the trapped electrons is estimated from the wave analysis, which is in good agreement with direct pitch angle measurements of the electron distributions. The newly formed beam-like electron distribution is unstable and excites whistler waves,as revealed in the observations. We suggest that KAWs could be responsible for the plasma depletion inside a flux rope by this transport process, and thus be responsible for the formation of a typical flux rope.