Laboratory Observations of Ultra-Low Frequency Analogue Waves Driven by the Right-Hand Resonant Ion Beam Instability.

The Right-Hand Resonant Instability (RHI) is one of several electromagnetic ion/ion beam instabilities responsible for the formation of parallel magnetized collisionless shocks and the generation of ultra-low frequency (ULF) waves in their foreshocks. This instability has been observed for the first time under foreshock-relevant conditions in the laboratory through the repeatable interaction of a preformed magnetized background plasma and a super-Alfvénic laser-produced plasma. This platform has enabled unprecedented volumetric measurements of waves generated by the RHI, revealing filamentary current structures in the transverse plane. These measurements are made in the plasma rest frame with both high spatial and temporal resolution, providing a perspective that is complementary to spacecraft observations. Direct comparison of data from both the experiment and the Wind spacecraft to 2D hybrid simulations demonstrates that the waves produced are analogous to the ULF waves observed upstream of the terrestrial bow shock.

Whistler anisotropy instabilities as the source of banded chorus: Van Allen Probes observations and particle-in-cell simulations.

Magnetospheric banded chorus is enhanced whistler waves with frequencies ωr <Ω e , where Ω e is the electron cyclotron frequency, and a characteristic spectral gap at ωr ≃Ω e /2. This paper uses spacecraft observations and two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations in a magnetized, homogeneous, collisionless plasma to test the hypothesis that banded chorus is due to local linear growth of two branches of the whistler anisotropy instability excited by two distinct, anisotropic electron components of significantly different temperatures. The electron densities and temperatures are derived from Helium, Oxygen, Proton, and Electron instrument measurements on the Van Allen Probes A satellite during a banded chorus event on 1 November 2012. The observations are consistent with a three-component electron model consisting of a cold (a few tens of eV) population, a warm (a few hundred eV) anisotropic population, and a hot (a few keV) anisotropic population. The simulations use plasma and field parameters as measured from the satellite during this event except for two numbers: the anisotropies of the warm and the hot electron components are enhanced over the measured values in order to obtain relatively rapid instability growth. The simulations show that the warm component drives the quasi-electrostatic upper band chorus and that the hot component drives the electromagnetic lower band chorus; the gap at âˆ¼Ω e /2 is a natural consequence of the growth of two whistler modes with different properties.

Quiet direct simulation of Eulerian fluids.

The direct simulation Monte Carlo method of modeling fluids requires sampling one or more random variables every time step for each particle. In this paper a "quiet Monte Carlo" technique is proposed that eliminates the random sampling and the noise it produces by deterministically generating a small number of computational particles. The technique is applied to particle equations of motion appropriate for modeling an Eulerian fluid. Results indicate that strong one- and two-dimensional shocks with large dynamic ranges are accurately represented with only a few particles per cell.