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MINI REVIEW article
Front. Astron. Space Sci.
Sec. Space Physics
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspas.2025.1573386
This article is part of the Research TopicEnergy Transfer And Exchange With Low-Energy Plasma Via Cross-Energy And Cross-Scale Interactions Throughout The MagnetosphereView all 3 articles
The role of wave-particle interactions in cold and warm plasma heating
Provisionally accepted- 1Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, United States
- 2Los Alamos National Laboratory (DOE), Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States
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Cold plasma originating from the ionosphere is a highly influential component of the magnetosphere, dominating its mass. It is typically treated as a passive background represented as an empirical density in models of the ring current, outer radiation belt, and wave propagation. While it is well established that cold plasma density plays a critical role in controlling wave properties - such as amplitude and wave vector - increasing theoretical and observational evidence suggests that cold plasma populations may actively couple with waves, exchanging energy through processes that are not yet fully understood. Importantly, these processes can energize cold plasma, gradually transforming it into warm and eventually hot plasma. This mini-review explores the role of wave-particle interactions in cold and warm plasma heating, highlighting their significance in facilitating coupling between different plasma populations in Earth's magnetosphere.
Keywords: Wave-particle interactions, Warm plasma, cold plasma, Plasmasphere, warm plasma cloak, coupling
Received: 09 Feb 2025; Accepted: 14 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Usanova, Delzanno and Maruyama. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Maria E Usanova, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, United States
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