Collisionless heat flux regulation via electron firehose instability in presence of a core and suprathermal population in the expanding solar wind

TL;DR

This study investigates how the electron firehose instability, influenced by multiple electron populations, regulates heat flux in the expanding solar wind through kinetic simulations, emphasizing the role of drift velocity reduction.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the reduction of electron drift velocity, rather than energy redistribution, primarily governs heat flux regulation via firehose instability in the solar wind.

Findings

Electron drift velocity reduction correlates with heat flux regulation.

Energy redistribution from parallel to perpendicular directions occurs but minimally impacts flux.

The electron firehose instability is key in controlling heat flux in the solar wind.

Abstract

The evolution of the electron heat flux in the solar wind is regulated by the interplay between several effects: solar wind expansion, that can potentially drive velocity-space instabilties, turbulence and wave-particle interactions, and, possibly, collisions. Here we address the respective role played by the solar wind expansion and the electron firehose instability, developing in the presence of multiple electron populations, in regulating the heat flux. We carry out fully kinetic, Expanding Box Model simulations and separately analyze the enthalpy, bulk and velocity distribution function skewness contributions for each of the electron species. We observe that the key factor determining electron energy flux evolution is the reduction of the drift velocity of the electron populations in the rest frame of the solar wind. In our simulations, redistribution of the electron thermal energy from the parallel to the perpendicular direction after the onset of the electron firehose instability is observed. However, this process seems to impact energy flux evolution only minimally. Hence, reduction of the electron species drift velocity in the solar wind frame appears to directly correlate with efficiency for heat flux instabilities