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Streaming Plasma Instability in Lunar Ionosphere

Conference Paper · March 2023

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 Streaming Plasma Instability in Lunar Ionosphere

Vipin K. Yadav1, Mehul Chakraborty2 and Rajneesh Kumar2

1
Space Physics Laboratory (SPL), Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Thumba,
Thiruvananthapuram 695022, Kerala
2Department of Physics, Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi 221005, Uttar Pradesh
*Corresponding Author E-mail: vkyadavcsp@gmail.com

Plasma instabilities are the non-linear processes occurring in plasmas when excess energy
gets accumulated in a plasma system. When the plasma system becomes incapable of holding
this excess energy, it releases it thereby triggering plasma instabilities. These instabilities are
often observed in space plasma systems such as the Sun, planetary ionospheres, etc. Earth’s
natural satellite Moon has a very thin atmosphere and hence a feeble plasma ionosphere.
However, this tenuous lunar plasma environment is a place of several non-linear plasma
phenomena. The solar wind, which strikes the lunar surface unhindered due to the absence of
global lunar magnetic field, is capable of triggering plasma instability in the lunar exosphere.

In the lunar plasma environment, two-stream instability (TSI) generation is studied

analytically which comes into existence due to the interaction of solar wind with the lunar
electron plasma near the exosphere. Subsequently, the conditions for the TSI to come into
existence are obtained and the growth of this instability with time the passage of time is
estimated as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: The TSI growth factor with k for different ne.

The TSI growth factor is found to be a function of lunar electron number density, solar
wind electron number density and the solar wind electron thermal velocity. The lunar TSI can
explain the observation and presence of high electron density in lunar ionosphere as it leads
to the bunching of solar wind electrons which increases the electron number density of the
lunar ionosphere.

Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations are also carried out for the visual depiction of this
plasma TSI evolution with time in phase space [1].

References:

[1] Mehul Chakraborty, Vipin K. Yadav, and Rajneesh Kumar (2023), ASR, 71,
doi:10.1016/j.asr.2022.11.050

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