Localization of beam generated whistler wave and turbulence generation in reconnection region of magnetopause

Abstract

Whistler waves have been studied for many years in relation to turbulence and particle heating, and observations show that they are crucial to magnetic reconnection. Recent research has revealed a close relationship between magnetic reconnection and turbulence. The current work investigates the whistler turbulence caused by the energetic electron beam in the magnetic reconnection sites of magnetopause and also due to dynamic evolution of magnetic islands. For this, we develop a model based upon the two-fluid approximation to study whistler dynamics, propagating in the medium with the pre-existing chain of magnetic islands and under the influence of background density perturbation originating from ponderomotive nonlinearity of wave. Dynamics of nonlinear whistler have been solved with pseudo-spectral approach and a finite difference method with a modified predictor–corrector method and a Runge Kutta method for the semianalytical model. In the current research, we study how the nonlinear whistler wave contributes to the significant space phenomenon, i.e., turbulence, localization, and magnetic reconnection. We have also investigated the formation of a current sheet in a magnetopause region of the order of few-electron inertial length. We analyzed the power spectrum at the magnetopause when the system reached a quasi-steady condition. Our new approach to study whistler turbulence by an energetic electron beam at the magnetic reconnection sites has extensive applications to space plasmas, shedding a new light on the study of magnetic reconnection in nature.