2019/09/19 by Lynn B. Wilson III, Li-Jen Chen, Shan Wang +10 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #physics.space-ph #astro-ph.SR #physics.plasm-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/1538-4365/ab5445
40 pages, 11 figures, 18 tables, to be submitted to Astrophys. J. Suppl
arxiv created 2019/09/19 · arxiv updated 2020/01/08
A statistical analysis of 15,210 electron velocity distribution function (VDF) fits, observed within ±2 hours of 52 interplanetary (IP) shocks by the Wind spacecraft near 1 AU, is presented. This is the second in a three-part series on electron VDFs near IP shocks. The electron velocity moment statistics for the dense, low energy core, tenuous, hot halo, and field-aligned beam/strahl are a statistically significant list of values illustrated with both histograms and tabular lists for reference and baselines in future work. The beam/strahl fit results in the upstream are currently the closest thing to a proper parameterization of the beam/strahl electron velocity moments in the ambient solar wind. This work will also serve as a 1 AU baseline and reference for missions like Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter. The median density, temperature, beta, and temperature anisotropy values for the core(halo)[beam/strahl] components, with subscripts ec(eh)[eb], of all fit results respectively are n\scriptstyleec(h)[b] ∼ 11.3(0.36)[0.17] cm-3, T\scriptstyleec(h)[b], tot ∼ 14.6(48.4)[40.2] eV, β\scriptstyleec(h)[b], tot ∼ 0.93(0.11)[0.05], and A\scriptstyleec(h)[b] ∼ 0.98(1.03)[0.93]. The nuanced details of the fitting method and data product description were published in Paper I and the detailed analysis of the results will be shown in Paper III.