Formation of gyrotropic and non gyrotropic field-aligned beams in the Earth's quasi-perpendicular Ion Foreshock: Full-particle 2D simulation results

The ion foreshock located upstream of the Earth's bow shock is populated with ions reflected back by the shock front with an high energy gain. In-situ spacecraft measurements have clearly established the existence of two distinct populations in the foreshock upstream of quasi-perpendicular shock region (i.e. for 45° ≤ Θ_Bn≤ 90°, where Θ_Bn is the angle between the shock normal and the upstream magnetostatic field): (i) field-aligned (';FAB') ion beams characterized by a gyrotropic distribution, and (ii) gyro-phase bunched (';GPB') ions characterized by a NON gyrotropic distribution, which exhibits a non-vanishing perpendicular bulk velocity. The purpose of the present work is to identify the possible sources of the different backstreaming ions and is based on the use of 2D PIC simulations of a curved shock, where full curvature effects, time of flight effects and both electrons and ions dynamics are fully described by a self consistent approach. Our analysis evidences that the two populations mentionned above may have different origins identified both in terms of interaction time and distance of penetration within the shock front. In particular, ours simulations evidence that "GPB" and ';FAB' populations are characterized by a short (Δ_inter= 1 to 2 tci) and much larger (Δ_inter= 1 to 10 tci) interaction time respectively, where τ_ci is the ion upstream gyroperiod. In addition, a deeper statistical analysis of ion trajectories evidences that: (i) both populations can be discriminated in terms of injection angle into the shock front (i.e. defined between the local normal to the shock front and the gyration velocity vector at the time ions reach the front). Such a behavior explains how reflected ions can be splitted in the observed two populations "FAB" and "GPB". (ii) ion trajectories strongly differ between the "FAB" and "GPB" populations at the shock front. In particular, ';FAB' ions suffer multi-bounces whereas ';GPB '; ions make only one bounce. Such differences can explain why the ';FAB' population loses their gyro-phase coherency and become gyrotropic which is not the case for the "GPB". As evidenced by these simulations the origin of both populations can be associated directly to their interaction with the shock front itself and do not require any upstream instability which can be another source for such backstreaming ions.