Phase coherence of MHD waves in the solar wind

Large amplitude MHD waves are commonly found in the solar wind. Nonlinear interactions between the MHD waves are likely to produce finite correlation among the wave phases. For discussions of various transport processes of energetic particles, it is fundamentally important to determine whether the wave phases are randomly distributed (as assumed in quasi-linear theories) or they have a finite coherence. Using a method based on a surrogate data technique and a fractal analysis, we analyzed Geotail magnetic field data (provided by S. Kokubun and T. Nagai through DARTS at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science) to evaluate the phase coherence among the MHD waves in the earth's foreshock region. The correlation of wave phases does exist, indicating that the nonlinear interactions between the waves is in progress. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Phase coherence of foreshock MHD waves: wavelet analysis

The earth's foreshock is a region where particularly large amplitude MHD waves are commonly observed. They exhibit various waveforms, suggesting that nonlinear interaction between the waves is in progress. In a previous paper (Hada et al., 2003) we have introduced a method to quantitatively evaluate the strength of phase coherence among the waves from a given time series data. Here we further develop our method by applying wavelet filtering technique. From the analysis it was found that, although the turbulence is consisted of waves with a wide range of plasma rest frame frequencies, only those frequencies lower than the ion gyrofrequency are responsible for generating the phase coherence. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Selected Problems in Collisionless-Shock Physics

The physics of collisionless shocks is a very broad topic, which has been well studied for many decades. However, there are a number of important issues which remain unresolved. Moreover, there have been new findings, which cast doubt on well-established ideas. The purpose of this review is to address a subset of unresolved problems in collisionless shock physics from a theoretical and/or numerical modeling point of view. The topics which are addressed are: the nonstationarity of the shock front, the heating and dynamics of electrons through the shock layer, particle diffusion in turbulent electric and magnetic fields, particle acceleration, and the interaction of pickup ions with collisionless shocks.     

Cross Field Diffusion of Cosmic Rays in a Two-Dimensional Magnetic Field Turbulence

Cross field diffusion of energetic particles (cosmic rays) in a two-dimensional static magnetic field turbulence is studied performing test particle simulations. Qualitatively different diffusion processes are observed depending on the ratio of Larmor radius (ρ) to the correlation length (λ) of the magnetic field fluctuations. The diffusion is found to be composed of several regimes with distinct statistical properties, which can be characterized using Levy statistics. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.