Electrons under the dominant action of shock-electric fields

We consider a fast magnetosonic multifluid shock as a representation of the solar-wind termination shock. We assume the action of the transition happens in a three-step process: In the first step, the upstream supersonic solar-wind plasma is subject to a strong electric field that flashes up on a small distance scale Δz ≃ U1/ Ωe (first part of the transition layer), where Ωe is the electron gyro-frequency and U1 is the upstream speed. This electric field both decelerates the supersonic ion flow and accelerates the electrons up to high velocities. In this part of the transition region, the electric forces connected with the deceleration of the ion flow strongly dominate over the Lorentz forces. We, therefore, call this part the demagnetization region. In the second phase, Lorentz forces due to convected magnetic fields compete with the electric field, and the highly anisotropic and energetic electron distribution function is converted into a shell distribution with energetic shell electrons storing about 3/4 of the upstream ion kinetic energy. In the third phase, the plasma particles thermalize due to the relaxation of free energy by plasma instabilities. The first part of the transition region opens up a new thermodynamic degree of freedom never before taken into account for the electrons, since the electrons are usually considered to be enslaved to follow the behavior of the protons in all velocity moments like density, bulk velocity, and temperature. We show that electrons may be the downstream plasma fluid that dominates the downstream plasma pressure

Traveling solar-wind bulk-velocity fluctuations and their effects on electron heating in the heliosphere

Ambient plasma electrons undergo strong heating in regions associated with compressive bulk-velocity jumps ΔU that travel through the interplanetary solar wind. The heating is generated by their specific interactions with the jump-inherent electric fields. After this energy gain is thermalized by the shock passage through the operation of the Buneman instability, strong electron heating occurs that substantially influences the radial electron temperature profile. We previously studied the resulting electron temperature assuming that the amplitude of the traveling velocity jump remains constant with increasing solar distance. Now we aim at a more consistent view, describing the change in jump amplitude with distance that is caused by the heated electrons. We describe the reduction of the jump amplitude as a result of the energy expended by the traveling jump structure. We consider three effects: energy loss due to heating of electrons, energy loss due to work done against the pressure gradient of the pick-up ions, and an energy gain due to nonlinear jump steepening. Taking these effects into account, we show that the decrease in jump amplitude with solar distance is more pronounced when the initial jump amplitude is higher in the inner solar system. Independent of the initial jump amplitude, it eventually decreases with increasing distance to a value of about ΔU/U ≃ 0.1 at the position of the heliospheric termination shock, where ΔU is the jump amplitude, and U is the average solar-wind bulk velocity.The electron temperature, on the other hand, is strongly correlated with the initial jump amplitude and leads to electron temperatures between 6000 K and 20 000 K at distances beyond 50 AU. We compare our results with in situ measurements of the electron-core temperature from the Ulysses spacecraft in the plane of the ecliptic for 1.5 AU ≤ r ≤ 5 AU, where r is the distance from the Sun. Our results agree very well with these observations, which corroborates our extrapolated predictions beyond r = 5 AU