arXiv · 2609.10422
Wave Emission and Absorption in a Near-Sun Proton-Cyclotron Wave Storm
Abstract
Quantification of energy transport and dissipation in weakly collisional heliospheric plasmas that are far from local thermodynamic equilibrium is an outstanding scientific problem. A central challenge is determining how non-Maxwellian velocity-space structure affects damping and emission of coherent ion-scale waves, especially compared to simplified analytical models for background plasma velocity distributions. In this work, we study the damping and emission of parallel-propagating proton cyclotron waves for two models of proton velocity distributions measured by the SPAN-I instrument on board Parker Solar Probe during an extended storm of waves with left-hand polarization in the solar wind at a heliocentric distance of 30.1 solar radii. Using the measured velocity distribution rather than a two-component bi-Maxwellian model predicts instabilities consistent with the observed coherent waves. For intervals in which both models predict net damping, the observed VDF model yields weaker damping in 90\% of cases, with a reduction in the integrated heating rate of 0.44 relative to the bi-Maxwellian model. These results suggest that simplified analytical velocity distribution models may overestimate cyclotron damping and underestimate wave emission in the near-Sun solar wind.
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Kristopher G Klein, Daniel Verscharen, Mihailo Martinovic, Niranjana, Ali Rahmati, Roberto Livi, Davin Larson, Michael Stevens. 2026-09-09. Wave Emission and Absorption in a Near-Sun Proton-Cyclotron Wave Storm. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.10422
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