Wave Transformation and Scattering on Stationary Charged Particles in a Magnetoactive Plasma. II

The transformation of upper-hybrid, lower-hybrid, and magnetosonic waves on a heavy charged particle lying at the plane boundary of a magnetoactive plasma is considered. The angular distribution of the radiation resulting from wave transformation is investigated. The transformation of a low-frequency magnetosonic wave is suggested as a possible mechanism for pulsar radio emission.     

太阳Ⅲ型暴与反向Langmuir波的产生

一般认为,Langmuir波(LW)转换为电磁波是太阳Ⅲ型射电暴的产生机制.由电子束流不稳定性可以很容易地激发LW,正向LW和反向LW的相互作用被认为是产生Ⅲ型暴二次谐波的原因,但反向LW的色散方程和产生机制尚未得到充分研究.对含有温度的双流不稳定性的方程进行了解析求解,发现温度和束流速度分别对反向和正向LW色散关系具有显著影响,并采用粒子模拟(PIC)方法部分证实了解析推导的结果.通过PIC模拟研究了反向LW的产生机制,发现反向LW不能由电子束流直接激发,其能量基本上都是由正向LW散射得到的.然而,电子束流对正向LW的二次谐波有直接放大作用.     

Evolution of morphological features of CMEs deduced from catastrophe model of solar eruptions

We describe the evolution of morphological features of the magnetic configuration of CME according to the catastrophe model developed previously. For the parameters chosen for the present work, roughly half of the total mass is nominally contained in the initial flux rope, while the remaining plasma is brought by magnetic reconnection from the corona into the current sheet and from there into the CME bubble. The physical attributes of the difference in the observable features between CME bubble and flare loop system were studied. We tentatively identified distinguishable evolutionary features like the outer shell, the expanding bubble and the flux rope with the leading edge, void and core of the 3-component CME structure. The role of magnetic reconnection is discussed as a possible mechanism for the heating of the prominence material during eruptions. Several aspects of this explanation that need improvement are outlined.     

PICsar: A 2.5D axisymmetric,relativistic, electromagnetic,Particle in Cell code with a radiation absorbing boundary

We present PICsar – a new Particle in Cell code geared towards efficiently simulating the magnetosphere of the aligned rotator. PICsar is a special relativistic, electromagnetic, charge conservative code that can be used to simulate arbitrary electromagnetics problems in axisymmetry. It features stretchable body-fitted coordinates that follow the surface of a sphere, simplifying the application of boundary conditions in the case of the aligned rotator; a radiation absorbing outer boundary, which allows a steady state to be set up dynamically and maintained indefinitely from transient initial conditions; and algorithms for injection of charged particles into the simulation domain. The code is parallelized using MPI and scales well to a large number of processors. We discuss the numerical methods used in PICsar and present tests of the code. In particular, we show that PICsar can accurately and efficiently simulate the magnetosphere of the aligned monopole rotator in the force-free limit. We present simulations of the aligned dipole rotator in a forthcoming paper.     

Magnetic diffusion and the motion of field lines

Diffusion of a magnetic field through a plasma is discussed in one-, two- and three-dimensional configurations, together with the possibility of describing such diffusion in terms of a magnetic flux velocity, which, when it exists, is in general non-unique. Physically useful definitions of such a velocity include doing so in terms of the energy flow or in such a way that it vanishes in a steady state. Straight field lines (or plane flux surfaces) diffuse as if flux is disappearing at a neutral sheet, whereas circular field lines (or cylindrical flux surfaces) do so as if flux is disappearing at an 0-type neutral line. In three dimensions it is not always possible to define a flux velocity, for example when the magnetic flux through a closed field line is changing in time. However, in at least some such cases it is possible to describe the behaviour of the magnetic field in terms of a pair of quasi-flux-velocities.     

Mg II h and k lines Stark parameters

Stark widths (W) and shifts (d) of the astrophysically very important singly ionized magnesium (Mg II) resonance h and k (279.5528 and 280.2705 nm) spectral lines in the 3s–3p transition have been measured at a 26,000 K electron temperature and 1.1 × 10²³ m⁻³ electron density in helium–oxygen plasma created in an optically thin linear, low-pressure, pulsed arc discharge. The magnesium atoms, as impurities in the driving gas, have been introduced by erosion from the pure magnesium bands fixed on the discharge electrodes providing conditions free of the self-absorption in the resonance h and k lines. Besides, the W and d values of the 279.0777 nm and 279.7998 nm Mg II lines in the 3p–3d transition have also been measured. Our W and d have been compared to the existing experimental and theoretical data. Good agreement was found with the results calculated by the semiclassical perturbation formalism, especially in the case of the Stark widths.     

Solar Flares with an Exponential Growth of the Emission Measure in the Impulsive Phase Derived from X-ray Observations

The light curves of solar ?ares in the impulsive phase are complex in general, indicating that multiple physical processes are involved in. With the GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) observations, we ?nd that there are a subset of ?ares, whose impulsive phases are dominated by a period of exponential growth of the emission measure. The ?ares occurred from January 1999 to December 2002 are analyzed, and the results from the observations made with both GOES 8 and GEOS 10 satellites are compared to estimate the instrumental uncertainties. Their mean temperatures during this exponential growth phase have a normal distribution. Most ?ares within the 1σ range of this temperature distribution belong to the GOES class B or C, with the peak ?uxes at the GOES low-energy channel following a log-normal distribution. The growth rate and duration of the exponential growth phase also follow a log- normal distribution, in which the duration is distributed in the range from half a minute to about half an hour. As expected, the growth time is correlated with the decay time of the soft X-ray ?ux. We also ?nd that the growth rate of the emission measure is strongly anti-correlated with the duration of the exponential growth phase, and the mean temperature increases slightly with the increase of the growth rate. The implications of these results on the study of energy release in solar ?ares are discussed in the end.     

Component thermalization time-scale estimate for the advection dominated accretion flow around Sgr A

We report here on a calculation of thermalization time-scale of the two temperature advection dominated accretion flow (ADAF) model. It is established that time required to equalize the electron and ion temperatures via electron-ion collisions in the ADAF with plausible physical parameters greatly exceeds the accretion time, which corroborates validity one of the crucial assumptions of the ADAF model, namely the existence of a hot two temperature plasma. This work is motivated by the recent success of the ADAF model [Nature 394 (1998) 651; MNRAS 304 (1999) 501] in explaining the emitted spectrum of Sgr A*, and it is complementary to the similar analysis of Mahadevan and Quataert [ApJ 490 (1997) 605].     

Effect of Dust Extinction on Gamma-ray Burst Afterglows

In order to study the effect of dust extinction on the afterglow of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), we carry out numerical calculations with high precision based on the rigorous Mie theory and the latest optical properties of interstellar dust grains, and analyze the different extinction curves produced by dust grains with different physical parameters. Our results indicate that the absolute extinction quantity is substantially determined by the medium density and metallicity. However, the shape of the extinction curve is mainly determined by the size distribution of the dust grains. If the dust grains aggregate to form larger ones, they will cause a flatter or grayer extinction curve with lower extinction quantity. On the contrary, if the dust grains are disassociated to smaller ones due to some uncertain processes, they will cause a steeper extinction curve with larger amount of extinction. These results might provide an important insight into understanding the origin of the optically dark GRBs.