Double layers are not particle accelerators
Abstract
It is pointed out that the continuing advocacy of electrostatic double layers as particle accelerators in the aurora and other space and astrophysical plasmas is fundamentally unsound. It is suggested furthermore that there is little reason to invoke static or quasi-static electric fields as the cause of auroral electron acceleration. Stochastic acceleration by electrostatic wave turbulence appears to present a natural explanation for this and for electron acceleration in other space and astrophysical plasmas.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review Letters
- Pub Date:
- January 1992
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevLett.68.37
- Bibcode:
- 1992PhRvL..68...37B
- Keywords:
-
- Auroral Zones;
- Electric Fields;
- Electrostatic Waves;
- Particle Accelerators;
- Plasma Layers;
- Charged Particles;
- Electrostatic Charge;
- Space Plasmas;
- Plasma Physics;
- 52.35.Mw;
- 52.70.Ds;
- 52.75.Di;
- Nonlinear phenomena: waves wave propagation and other interactions;
- Electric and magnetic measurements;
- Ion and plasma propulsion