Obliquely propagating electromagnetic waves in magnetized kappa plasmas

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive theoretical framework for analyzing obliquely propagating electromagnetic waves in magnetized plasmas with kappa velocity distribution functions, extending previous models limited to parallel or perpendicular propagation.

Contribution

It generalizes the dielectric tensor and dispersion relations for waves in kappa plasmas at arbitrary angles, enabling complete analysis of wave-particle interactions.

Findings

Derived general expressions for wave dispersion in kappa plasmas.

Extended previous models to include oblique wave propagation.

Facilitated analysis of instabilities involving mixed propagation directions.

Abstract

Velocity distribution functions (VDFs) that exhibit a power-law dependence on the high-energy tail have been the subject of intense research by the plasma physics community. Such functions, known as kappa or superthermal distributions, have been found to provide a better fitting to the VDFs measured by spacecraft in the solar wind. One of the problems that is being addressed on this new light is the temperature anisotropy of solar wind protons and electrons. In the literature, the general treatment for waves excited by (bi-)Maxwellian plasmas is well-established. However, for kappa distributions, the wave characteristics have been studied mostly for the limiting cases of purely parallel or perpendicular propagation, relative to the ambient magnetic field. Contributions to the general case of obliquely-propagating electromagnetic waves have been scarcely reported so far. The absence of a general treatment prevents a complete analysis of the wave-particle interaction in kappa plasmas, since some instabilities can operate simultaneously both in the parallel and oblique directions. In a recent work, Gaelzer and Ziebell [J. Geophys. Res. 119, 9334 (2014)] obtained expressions for the dielectric tensor and dispersion relations for the low-frequency, quasi-perpendicular dispersive Alfv\'en waves resulting from a kappa VDF. In the present work, the formalism introduced by Ref. 1 is generalized for the general case of electrostatic and/or electromagnetic waves propagating in a kappa plasma in any frequency range and for arbitrary angles. An isotropic distribution is considered, but the methods used here can be easily applied to more general anisotropic distributions, such as the bi-kappa or product-bi-kappa.