Polarization and Compressibility of Oblique Kinetic Alfvén Waves

Abstract

It is well known that a complete description of the solar wind requires a kinetic description and that, particularly at sub-proton scales, kinetic effects cannot be ignored. It is nevertheless usually assumed that at scales significantly larger than the proton gyroscale rʟ, magnetohydrodynamics or its extensions, such as Hall-MHD and two-fluid models with isotropic pressures, provide a satisfactory description of the solar wind. Here we calculate the polarization and magnetic compressibility of oblique kinetic Alfvén waves and show that, compared with linear kinetic theory, the isotropic two-fluid description is very compressible, with the largest discrepancy occurring at scales larger than the proton gyroscale. In contrast, introducing anisotropic pressure fluctuations with the usual double-adiabatic (or CGL) equations of state yields compressibility values which are unrealistically low. We also show that both of these classes of fluid models incorrectly describe the electric field polarization. To incorporate linear kinetic effects, we use two versions of the Landau fluid model that include linear Landau damping and finite Larmor radius (FLR) corrections. We show that Landau damping is crucial for correct modeling of magnetic compressibility, and that the anisotropy of pressure fluctuations should not be introduced without taking into account the Landau damping through appropriate heat flux equations. We also show that FLR corrections to all the retained fluid moments appear to be necessary to yield the correct polarization. We conclude that kinetic effects cannot be ignored even for krʟ ≪ 1.