Simulation study of the ionizing front in the critical ionization velocity phenomenon.

Negative pickup ions detected during the TSS 1 mission

“…In any case, it is difficult to imagine wave-particle interactions, which are essentially randomizing processes, producing the structured particle fluxes found in the top spectrogram of Plate 1separation layer to be the geometric mean of the electron and ion gyroradii. Electrons E x B drift within the layer with kinetic energy comparable to that of the neutrals[Machida et al, 1988].When we consider the SPREE measurements in light of this model, two discrepancies arise. First, the observed maximum kinetic energy of the electrons would be ~56 eV, while that of the neutrals in the rest frame of the plasma is only a few eV.…”