Potential role of kinetic Alfvén waves and whistler waves in solar wind plasmas

Abstract

Spacecraft observations indicate the signatures of highly oblique kinetic Alfvén waves (KAWs) and whistler waves in the solar wind plasma. In the present work, we explore the possible role of KAWs and whistler waves in the observed solar wind magnetic turbulent spectrum. The nonlinear spatial evolution of KAW is studied including the effects of the ponderomotive force which results in intense localized structures due to the background density modification. Weak quasi-transverse whistler wave propagating through these localized structures also gets localized in the form of small-scale localized structures. We present numerically calculated magnetic power spectra for both KAW as well as for whistler wave. Our obtained results demonstrate the important role that KAWs and whistler waves play in the energy cascading from larger to smaller scales. The relevance of these results to recent spacecraft observations is also pointed out.