TY - JOUR
T1 - Applying Nyquist's method for stability determination to solar wind observations
AU - Klein, Kristopher G.
AU - Kasper, Justin C.
AU - Korreck, K. E.
AU - Stevens, Michael L.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Peter Gary for insightful discussions concerning the Wind intervals selected for study in Gary et al. [2016]. The plasma parameters used for the Wn calculations in section 4 can be found in Table 1 of Gary et al. [2016]. K.G. Klein was supported by NASA grant NNX16AG81G. J.C. Kasper, K.E. Korreck, and M.L. Stevens acknowledge support from NASA under contract NNN06AA01C (Task NNN10AA08T) to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. M.L. Stevens was also supported by NASA grant NNX14AT26G.
PY - 2017/10
Y1 - 2017/10
N2 - The role instabilities play in governing the evolution of solar and astrophysical plasmas is a matter of considerable scientific interest. The large number of sources of free energy accessible to such nearly collisionless plasmas makes general modeling of unstable behavior, accounting for the temperatures, densities, anisotropies, and relative drifts of a large number of populations, analytically difficult. We therefore seek a general method of stability determination that may be automated for future analysis of solar wind observations. This work describes an efficient application of the Nyquist instability method to the Vlasov dispersion relation appropriate for hot, collisionless, magnetized plasmas, including the solar wind. The algorithm recovers the familiar proton temperature anisotropy instabilities, as well as instabilities that had been previously identified using fits extracted from in situ observations in Gary et al. (2016). Future proposed applications of this method are discussed.
AB - The role instabilities play in governing the evolution of solar and astrophysical plasmas is a matter of considerable scientific interest. The large number of sources of free energy accessible to such nearly collisionless plasmas makes general modeling of unstable behavior, accounting for the temperatures, densities, anisotropies, and relative drifts of a large number of populations, analytically difficult. We therefore seek a general method of stability determination that may be automated for future analysis of solar wind observations. This work describes an efficient application of the Nyquist instability method to the Vlasov dispersion relation appropriate for hot, collisionless, magnetized plasmas, including the solar wind. The algorithm recovers the familiar proton temperature anisotropy instabilities, as well as instabilities that had been previously identified using fits extracted from in situ observations in Gary et al. (2016). Future proposed applications of this method are discussed.
KW - plasma instabilities
KW - solar wind
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U2 - 10.1002/2017JA024486
DO - 10.1002/2017JA024486
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85034745262
VL - 122
SP - 9815
EP - 9823
JO - Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
JF - Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
SN - 2169-897X
IS - 10
ER -