Extended Cyclotron Resonant Heating of the Turbulent Solar Wind

TL;DR

This study uses Parker Solar Probe data to show that ion-cyclotron waves are linked to turbulence-driven ion heating in the solar wind, highlighting their role in energy dissipation at ion scales.

Contribution

It demonstrates the connection between ion-kinetic waves and turbulence-driven ion heating, applying quasilinear theory and decay laws to quantify dissipation mechanisms.

Findings

Ion-cyclotron waves are associated with transition-range steepening.

Ion-cyclotron heating rates are a significant fraction of the turbulent cascade rate.

Cyclotron heating is a key dissipation process in the solar wind.

Abstract

Circularly polarized, nearly parallel propagating waves are prevalent in the solar wind at ion-kinetic scales. At these scales, the spectrum of turbulent fluctuations in the solar wind steepens, often called the transition-range, before flattening at sub-ion scales. Circularly polarized waves have been proposed as a mechanism to couple electromagnetic fluctuations to ion gyromotion, enabling ion-scale dissipation that results in observed ion-scale steepening. Here, we study Parker Solar Probe observations of an extended stream of fast solar wind ranging from 15-55 solar radii. We demonstrate that, throughout the stream, transition-range steepening at ion-scales is associated with the presence of significant left handed ion-kinetic scale waves, which are thought to be ion-cyclotron waves. We implement quasilinear theory to compute the rate at which ions are heated via cyclotron resonance with the observed circularly polarized waves given the empirically measured proton velocity distribution functions. We apply the Von Karman decay law to estimate the turbulent decay of the large-scale fluctuations, which is equal to the turbulent energy cascade rate. We find that the ion-cyclotron heating rates are correlated with, and amount to a significant fraction of, the turbulent energy cascade rate, implying that cyclotron heating is an important dissipation mechanism in the solar wind.