MAVEN observation of magnetosonic waves in the Martian magnetotail region

Magnetosonic waves are an important medium for energy transfer in collisionless space plasma.Magnetosonic waves have been widely investigated in the upstream of the bow shock at Mars.These waves are believed to originate from pickup ions or reflected particles.By utilizing MAVEN spacecraft data,we have observed the occurrence of quasi-perpendicularly propagating magnetosonic emissions near the proton gyrofrequency in the Martian magnetotail region.These plasma waves are associated with a significant enhancement of proton and oxygen flux.The excited magnetosonic waves could possibly heat the protons through resonance and facilitate the ionospheric plasma escape.Our results could be helpful to better understand the Mars’magnetospheric dynamics and offer insights into possible energy redistribution between waves and plasma in the Martian nightside magnetosphere.

Study on electron stochastic motions in the magnetosonic wave field: Test particle simulations

Using the test particle simulation method, we investigate the stochastic motion of electrons with energy of 300 keV in a monochromatic magnetosonic(MS) wave field. This study is motivated by the violation of the quasi-linear theory assumption, when strong MS waves(amplitude up to ~1 nT) are present in the Earth's magnetosphere. First, electron motion can become stochastic when the wave amplitude exceeds a certain threshold. If an electron initially resonates with the MS wave via bounce resonance, as the bounce resonance order increases, the amplitude threshold of electron stochastic motion increases until it reaches the peak at about the 11 th order in our study, then the amplitude threshold slowly declines. Further, we find that the coexistence of bounce and Landau resonances between electrons and MS waves will significantly reduce the amplitude threshold. In some cases, the electron motion can become stochastic in the field of an MS wave with amplitudes below 1 nT. Regardless, if neither the bounce nor Landau resonance condition is satisfied initially, then the amplitude threshold of stochastic motion shows an increasing trend for lower frequencies and a decreasing trend for higher frequencies, even though the amplitude threshold is always very large(> 5 nT). Our study suggests that electron stochastic motion should also be considered when modeling electron dynamics regulated by intense MS waves in the Earth's magnetosphere.

Nonlinear dynamical magnetosonic wave interactions and collisions in magnetized plasma

The one-dimensional nonlinear dynamical wave interactions in a system of quasineutral two-fluid plasma in a constant magnetic field are investigated.The existence of the travelling wave solutions is discussed.The modulation stability of linear waves and the modulation instability of weakly nonlinear waves are presented.Both suggest that the Korteweg-de Vries(KdV)system is modulationally stable.Besides,the wave interactions including the periodic wave interaction and the solitary wave interaction are captured and presented.It is shown that these interacting waves alternately exchange their energy during propagation.The Fourier spectrum analysis is used to depict the energy transformation between the primary and harmonic waves.It is known that the wave interactions in magnetized plasma play an important role in various processes of heating and energy transportation in space and astrophysical plasma.However,few researchers have considered such magnetohydrodynamic(MHD)wave interactions in plasma.It is expected that this work can provide additional insight into understanding of behaviors of MHD wave interactions.

Investigation of the fast magnetosonic wave excited by the Alfvén wave phase mixing by using the Hall–MHD model in inhomogeneous plasma

The inhomogeneity is introduced by a nonzero density gradient which separates the plasma into two different regions where plasma density are constant.The Alfvén waves,the phase mixing and the fast magnetosonic wave are excited by the boundary condition in inhomogeneous magnetized plasma.By using the Hall–magnetohydrodynamics(MHD)model,it is found that there are Alfvén waves in the homogeneous regions,while the phase mixing appears in the inhomogeneous region.The interesting result is that a fast magnetosonic wave is excited in a different direction which has a nonzero angle between the wave propagation direction and the direction of the background magnetic field.The dependence of the propagation direction of the excited fast magnetosonic wave and its strength of the magnetic field on the plasma parameters are given numerically.The results show that increasing both the driving frequency and the ratio of magnetic pressure to thermal pressure will increase the acceleration of the electrons.The electron acceleration also depends on the inhomogeneity parameters.

Relativistic Magnetosonic Solitary Wave in Magnetized Multi-Ion Plasma

In the presence of an applied uniform magnetic field Bo, the properties of 2-dimensional （2D） magnetosonic solitary waves of relativistic amplitude in the plasma containing electron, light ions He^＋, and heavy ions O＋ are presented. In the weakly relativistic limit, a Kadomtsev Petviashvili （KP） equation is derived by reductive perturbation method. We give the N-soliton solution of the KP equation and find dromion solutions of a potential of the physical field. The interaction law of the dromions is obtained, which shows there is no exchange of energy, momentum, and angular momentum before and after interaction of the dromions except for phase shifts.

Effect of kappa distribution on the damping rate of the obliquely propagating magnetosonic mode

Data from spacecrafts suggest that space plasma has an abundance of suprathermal particles which are controlled by the spectral index κ when modeled on kappa particle velocity distribution. In this paper, considering homogeneous plasma, the effect of integer values of κ on the damping rate of an obliquely propagating magnetosonic（MS） wave is studied. The frequency of the MS wave is assumed to be less than ion cyclotron frequency, i.e.,iw（28）w. Under this assumption, the dispersion relation is investigated both numerically and analytically, and it is found that the real frequency of the wave is not a sensitive function of κ, but the imaginary part of the frequency is. It is also shown that for those values of κ where a large number of resonant particles participate in wave–particle interaction, the wave is heavily damped, as expected. The possible application of the results to the solar wind is discussed.

A method of magnetosonic characteristics to correct the "rarefaction shocks" problem arising in ZEUS

ZEUS is a magnetohydrodynamics simulation code widely used in astrophysical research.However,it was recently found that the code may produce artificial shocks in the rarefaction region in some numerical tests since it is not upwinded in fast and slow waves.We propose a method of magnetosonic characteristics to evolve compressional waves.The tests indicate that this method cures the "rarefaction shocks" problem to a large extent and it also greatly reduces some post shock oscillations.