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Collisional damping of wave modes in ion–electron plasmas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2024

J. De Vadder*
Affiliation:
Centre for Mathematical Plasma Astrophysics, KU Leuven, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium
J. De Jonghe
Affiliation:
Centre for Mathematical Plasma Astrophysics, KU Leuven, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9SS, UK
R. Keppens
Affiliation:
Centre for Mathematical Plasma Astrophysics, KU Leuven, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium
*
Email address for correspondence: joeri.devadder@student.kuleuven.be

Abstract

To expand on recent work, we introduce collisional terms in the analysis of the warm ion–electron, two-fluid equations for a homogeneous plasma at rest. Consequently, the plasma is now described by six variables: the magnetisation, the ratio of masses over charges, the electron and ion sound speeds, the angle between the wave vector and the magnetic field and a new parameter describing the electron–ion collision frequency. This additional parameter does not introduce new wave modes compared with the collisionless case, but does result in complex mode frequencies. Both for the backward and forward propagating modes the imaginary components are negative and thus quantify collisional damping. We provide convenient (polynomial) expressions to quantify frequencies and damping rates in all short- and long-wavelength limits, including the cutoff and resonance limits, whilst the one-fluid magnetohydrodynamic limit is retained with the familiar undamped slow, Alfvén and fast waves. As collisions only introduce a damping, the previously introduced labelling of the wave modes S, A, F, M, O and X can be kept and assigned based on their long- and short-wavelength behaviour. The obtained damping at cutoff and resonance limits is parametrised with the collision frequency, and can be tailored to match known kinetic damping expressions. It is demonstrated that varying the angle can introduce crossings between the wave modes, as was already present in the ideal ion–electron case, but also a collision frequency exceeding a critical collision frequency can lead to crossings at angles where previously only avoided crossings were found.

Information

Type
Research Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Table 1. Structure of the dispersion relation. Bold coefficients are independent of $\bar {\nu }$.

Figure 1

Figure 1. Dispersion diagram for parallel propagation for typical coronal loop parameters, taking $\mu \approx 1/1836$, $E = 0.935$, $v = 0.018$, $w = 0.0004$ and $\nu = 10^{-8}$. (a) Wave frequencies, with insets showing the crossing behaviour. (b) Damping rates. (c) Logarithmic scale of damping rates in small-wavelength regime.

Figure 2

Figure 2. Perpendicular dispersion diagram for $\mu = 1/1836$, $E = 0.935$, $v = 0.018$, ${w = 0.0004}$ and $\nu = 10^{-5}$. (a) Wave frequencies. (b) Damping rates. (c) Logarithmic scale of damping rates in small-wavelength regime. Colour scheme is the same as in figure 1.

Figure 3

Figure 3. Dispersion diagram for a cold pair plasma, taking $\mu = 1$, $E = 1.5$, $v, w = 0$, ${\theta = {\rm \pi}/2}$ and $\nu = 10^{-1}$. (a) Wave frequencies. (b) Damping rates. (c) Logarithmic scale of damping rates in small-wavelength regime. Colour scheme is the same as in figure 1.

Figure 4

Figure 4. Dispersion diagram for $\mu = 1/1836$, $E = 0.935$, $v = 0.018$, $w = 0.0004$, $\theta = {\rm \pi}/4$ and $\nu = 10^{-8}$. (a) Wave frequencies. (b) Damping rates. (c) Logarithmic scale of damping rates in small-wavelength regime. The insets in panels (a,b) highlight the (avoided) crossing behaviour. Colour scheme is the same as in figure 1.

Figure 5

Figure 5. Dispersion diagram for $\mu = 1/1836$, $E = 0.935$, $v = 0.018$, $w = 0.0004$, $\theta = {\rm \pi}/4$ and $\nu = 10^{-2}$. (a) Wave frequencies. (b) Damping rates. (c) Logarithmic scale of damping rates in small-wavelength regime. The insets in panels (a,b) highlight the (avoided) crossing behaviour. Colour scheme is the same as in figure 1.

Figure 6

Figure 6. Zoomed in view of the AF crossings and avoided crossings in the dispersion diagram for $\mu = 1/1836$, $E = 0.935$, $v = 0.018$, $w = 0.0004$, $\theta = \sqrt {2}/2$ and varying $\nu$. Colour scheme is the same as in figure 1.

Figure 7

Figure 7. Dispersion diagram for a cold pair plasma, taking $\mu = 1$, $E = 1.5$, $v, w = 0$, ${\theta = {\rm \pi}/3}$ and $\nu = 10^{-1}$. (a) Wave frequencies. (b) Damping rates. (c) Logarithmic scale of damping rates in small-wavelength regime. Colour scheme is the same as in figure 1.

Figure 8

Figure 8. Dispersion diagram for a cold pair plasma, taking $\mu = 1$, $E = 1.5$, $v, w = 0$, ${\theta = 0.02}$ and $\nu = 10^{-1}$. (a) Wave frequencies. (b) Damping rates. (c) Logarithmic scale of damping rates in small-wavelength regime. Colour scheme is the same as in figure 1.