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M. Velli (Dept. of Astronomy, University of Florence), P.C. Liewer, B.E. Goldstein (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
We present simulations of parallel propagating Alfvén waves in the accelerating solar wind and their interactions with protons, alpha particles, and minor ions using an expanding box hybrid code (Liewer et al., 1999). In this model, the average solar wind flow speed is a given external function, and the simulation domain follows a plasma parcel as it expands both in the radial and transverse directions accordingly: the decrease of Alfvén speed and density with distance from the Sun are taken into account self-consistently. It is therefore possible to carry out a detailed study of frequency drifting and the coming into resonance with the waves at different radial locations of particles with differing charge to mass ratios. Simulations of monochromatic waves as well as waves with well-developed spectra are presented for plasmas with one, two and three ion species. We observe preferential heating and acceleration of protons and minor ions. Under some conditions, we obtain the scaling observed in coronal hole solar wind: the heavy ion temperature is proportional to its mass (Liewer et al., 2000). A comparison with predictions from models based on such quasi-linear or linear analyses will also be presented.
P. C. Liewer, M. Velli and B. E. Goldstein, in Solar Wind Nine, S. Habbal, R. Esser, J. V. Hollweg, P. A. Isenberg, eds., (AIP Conference Proceedings 471, 1999) 449. P. C. Liewer, M. Velli, and B. E. Goldstein, in Proc. ACE 2000 Conference (2000) to be published.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: velli@arcetri.astro.it