Convective cell generation by kinetic Alfvén wave turbulence in the auroral ionosphere

Abstract

Modulation of convective cells by kinetic Alfvén wave (KAW) turbulence is investigated. The interaction is governed by a nonlinear dispersion relation for the convective cells. It is shown that KAW turbulence is disrupted by excitation of the large-scale convective motion through a resonant instability. Application of the results to the auroral ionosphere shows that cross-scale coupling of the KAW turbulence and convective cells plays an important role in the evolution of ionospheric plasma turbulence. V C 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.

Alfven wave interactions within the Hall-MHD description

“…Very recent papers (e.g. Rudakov et al 2011;Kumar and Sharma 2011;Zhao et al 2011Zhao et al , 2012Das et al 2012;Kumar 2012) confirm the increasing interest in such phenomena. Zhao et al (2011) thus considered the interaction between three Alfven waves, where one wave propagates along the external magnetic field whereas the other two waves have oblique propagation directions.…”

“…Zhao et al (2011) thus considered the interaction between three Alfven waves, where one wave propagates along the external magnetic field whereas the other two waves have oblique propagation directions. Furthermore, Zhao et al (2012) showed that such couplings lead to large-scale self-organized convective vortex and vortex chain configurations (e.g. Chmyrev et al 1988).…”

Nonlinear interaction and parametric instability of kinetic Alfvén waves in multicomponent plasmas

“…By combining Eqs. (8) and (12), we can derive a nonlinear equation to describe the nonlinear coupling system of the KAWs,…”

“…1,2 Recently, the nonlinear properties of the KAWs have been attracting much attention. [3][4][5][6][7][8] KAWs can interact with the large-scale MHD Alfv en waves, 9,10 where the wave energy can be transferred directly from the MHD scales to the kinetic scales. KAWs can also couple with high-frequency modes, such as the ion cyclotron, lower hybrid, and Langmuir waves and be excited by the latter.…”

Potential role of kinetic Alfvén waves and whistler waves in solar wind plasmas

“…Because the electron thermal speed exceeds the Alfvén speed, the electrons respond adiabatically to the wave fields. The nonlinear properties of KAW convey its theoretical and analytical usefulness (Zhao et al 2010(Zhao et al , 2011(Zhao et al , 2012. Highly oblique KAW are considered good candidates for the observed solar wind turbulence spectrum at scales below ion gyro-radius (Howes 2015).…”