Plasma flows in a converging and diverging configuration and the associated plasma particle acceleration: kinetic approach

Abstract

Transport laws in collisionless systems must be derived from the one-particle Liouville equation. The simplest cases are those of the CGL invariants along the magnetic field lines, together with the resulting equations of continuity and motion, in circumstances where a supersonic particle flux is parallel to a diminishing magnetic field. We give functional expressions for the two contributions to the parallel heat flux, with integrated forms of kinetic theory. The general expressions, corresponding to the moments of greater order, coincide with those obtained by series development of the differential equation of moments. Moreover, we illustrate a case of both parallel and convergent flux, for which the equation of continuity gives considerable acceleration to the precipitation flux average velocity in the absence of any important electric field, because that acceleration is important in understanding the relationship between the plasmasheet and the ionosphere.