Quantified Plasma Heating and Energy Dissipation in the Earth’s Quasi-perpendicular Bow Shock

Abstract

The high-speed solar wind decelerates as it travels through the Earth’s bow shock, during which a portion of the incident flow energy is converted into the plasma thermal energy. However, the energy partition of plasma heating among different species, as well as the energy dissipation mechanism, remains elusive. In this paper, we quantify the plasma heating and the energy dissipation by calculating the pressure–strain interactions in 33 quasi-perpendicular bow shocks observed by the Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft. Our results show that the Joule dissipation measured by ${\boldsymbol{J}}\cdot {{\boldsymbol{E}}}^{{\prime} }$ and the quasi-viscous dissipation quantified by PiD are distinct in the examined shocks. We also reveal that ions gain more energy than electrons, and the compressive effect is more important than the incompressible channel in plasma heating. PiD contributed by the gyrotropic pressure tensor is consistently positive for electrons; however, there is no discernible distinction between the gyrotropic and nongyrotropic contribution to PiD for ions.

Keywords

• Space plasmas
• Plasma physics
• Shocks
• Planetary bow shocks