The Solar Wind Electron Halo as Produced by Electron Beams Originating
in Nanoflares: Beam Density Dependence
Abstract
Observations of the solar wind ion-charge states suggested that the
origin of solar wind is associated with nanoflare-like impulsive events.
It has been suggested by Che and Goldstein that the nearly isotropic
electron halo observed in the solar wind electron velocity distribution
function may originate from nanoflare-accelerated electron beams below
1.1 R_{sun} from the solar surface through the non-linear electron
two-stream instability (ETSI). This model unifies the origins of kinetic
waves, the electron halo, and the coronal weak Type III bursts, and
establishes a link between the solar wind observables and the electron
dynamics in nanoflares. One of the important predictions of this model
is that the halo-core temperature ratio is anti-correlated with the
density ratio, and the minimum halo-core temperature ratio is
\sim 4 , a relic of the ETSI heating and has been found
to be consistent with WIND, ACE and Helios observations. However, the
density and the relative drift of the electron beams in the source
region in the corona, which are essential for the evolution of ETSI,
cannot be directly measured. In this paper, using a set of
particle-in-cell simulations and kinetic theory, we show that a
necessary condition for an isotropic halo to develop is that the ratio
of beam density n_b and the background n_0 be lower than a critical
value N_c ~ 0.3. Heating of the core electrons becomes
weaker with decreasing beam density, while the heating of halo electrons
becomes stronger. As a result, the temperature ratio of the halo and
core electrons increases with the decrease of the beam density. We apply
these results to the current observations and discuss the possible
electron beam density produced in the nanoflares.