Proton Heating in Solar Wind Compressible Turbulence with Collisions between Counter-propagating Waves

TL;DR

This paper presents direct evidence of plasma turbulence heating in the solar wind, highlighting the role of counter-propagating waves and their interactions with protons, revealing new wave dynamics and particle heating mechanisms.

Contribution

It reports the first simultaneous observation of counter-propagating magnetohydrodynamic waves in the solar wind and links these to proton heating via wave-particle interactions.

Findings

Observation of counter-propagating Alfvén and slow magnetosonic waves.

Protons exhibit bi-directional asymmetric velocity beams.

Multiple wave-particle interactions contribute to proton heating.

Abstract

Magnetohydronamic turbulence is believed to play a crucial role in heating the laboratorial, space, and astrophysical plasmas. However, the precise connection between the turbulent fluctuations and the particle kinetics has not yet been established. Here we present clear evidence of plasma turbulence heating based on diagnosed wave features and proton velocity distributions from solar wind measurements by the Wind spacecraft. For the first time, we can report the simultaneous observation of counter-propagating magnetohydrodynamic waves in the solar wind turbulence. Different from the traditional paradigm with counter-propagating Alfv\'en waves, anti-sunward Alfv\'en waves (AWs) are encountered by sunward slow magnetosonic waves (SMWs) in this new type of solar wind compressible turbulence. The counter-propagating AWs and SWs correspond respectively to the dominant and sub-dominant populations of the imbalanced Els\"asser variables. Nonlinear interactions between the AWs and SMWs are inferred from the non-orthogonality between the possible oscillation direction of one wave and the possible propagation direction of the other. The associated protons are revealed to exhibit bi-directional asymmetric beams in their velocity distributions: sunward beams appearing in short and narrow patterns and anti-sunward broad extended tails. It is suggested that multiple types of wave-particle interactions, i.e., cyclotron and Landau resonances with AWs and SMWs at kinetic scales, are taking place to jointly heat the protons perpendicularly and parallel.