Electrostatic Plasma Wave Excitations at the Interplanetary Shocks

Abstract

Over the last few decades, different types of plasma waves (e.g., the ion acoustic waves (IAWs), electrostatic solitary waves, upper/lower hybrid waves, and Langmuir waves) have been observed in the upstream, downstream, and ramp regions of the collisionless interplanetary (IP) shocks. These waves may appear as short-duration (only a few milliseconds at 1 au) electric field signatures in the in-situ measurements, with typical frequencies of ∼1-10 kHz. A number of IAW features at the IP shocks seem to be unexplained by kinetic models and require a new modeling effort. Thus, this paper is dedicated to bridging this gap in understanding. In this paper, we model the linear IAWs inside the shock ramp by devising a novel linearization method for the two-fluid magnetohydrodynamic equations with spatially dependent shock parameters. It is found that, for parallel propagating waves, the linear dispersion relation leads to a finite growth rate, which is dependent on the shock density compression ratio, as Wind data suggest. Further analysis reveals that the wave frequency grows towards the downstream region within the shock ramp, and the wave growth rate is independent of the electron-to-ion temperature ratio, as Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) in-situ measurements suggest, and is uniform within the shock ramp. Thus, this study helps in understanding the characteristics of the IAWs at the collisionless IP shocks. © 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.