Evolution of Electron Acceleration by Corotating Interaction Region Shocks at 1 au

Abstract

We present the first observations of in situ electron acceleration at corotating interaction region (CIR) shocks near 1 au, utilizing measurements from Wind and Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission in the interplanetary medium. As the forward (reverse) shock of the 2018 January CIR (the 2020 February CIR) moves from Wind at [206, 92, −7] R _E ([257, 25, 3] R _E ) to MMS1 at [24, 2, 7] R _E ([25, 3, 0.5] R _E ), the shock’s thickness becomes 8 (3) times thinner, but the convective electric field E _drift gets weaker (stronger) along the shock; both the upstream and shocked suprathermal electrons exhibit a flatter flux energy spectrum, while the electron shock acceleration becomes less (more) significant. For the shocked suprathermal electrons with significant flux enhancement, the flux ratio across the shock appears to peak in the direction perpendicular to the magnetic field. Therefore, the CIR shock acceleration of solar wind suprathermal electrons at 1 au exhibits an efficiency increasing with the E _drift strength. These results also suggest that such acceleration through the interplanetary medium can contribute to the formation of solar wind suprathermal electrons.

Keywords

• Interplanetary particle acceleration
• Interplanetary shocks
• Corotating streams