The MAVEN SupraThermal And Thermal Ion Compostion (STATIC) instrument is designed to measure the ion composition and distribution function of the cold Martian ionosphere, the heated suprathermal tail of this plasma in the upper ionosphere, and the pickup ions accelerated by solar wind electric fields. STATIC operates over an energy range of 0.1 eV up to 30 keV, with a base time resolution of 4 seconds. The instrument consists of a toroidal "top hat" electrostatic analyzer with a 360• × 90• field-of-view, combined with a time-of-flight (TOF) velocity analyzer with 22.5• resolution in the detection plane. The TOF combines a −15 kV acceleration voltage with ultra-thin carbon foils to resolve H + , He ++ , He + , O + , O + 2 , and CO + 2 ions. Secondary electrons from carbon foils are detected by microchannel plate detectors and binned into a variety of data products with varying energy, mass, angle, and time resolution. To prevent detector saturation when measuring cold ram ions at periapsis (∼ 10 11 eV/cm 2 s sr eV), while maintaining adequate sensitivity to resolve tenuous pickup ions at apoapsis (∼ 10 3 eV/cm 2 s sr eV), the sensor includes both mechanical and electrostatic attenuators that increase the dynamic range by a factor of 10 3 . This paper describes the instrument hardware, including several innovative improvements over previous TOF sensors, the ground calibrations of the sensor, the data products generated by the experiment, and some early measurements during cruise phase to Mars.

Magnetic reconnection is an important phenomenon extensively existing in the interplanetary space and planetary magnetosphere, such as solar flares, solar and stellar coronae, solar wind, planetary magnetosphere, the interplanetary space, the interstellar medium, neutron start, accretion disks, astrophysical jets, galaxy clusters, and black holes. The traditional cognition is that the energy carried by the magnetic field comes to explosions through reconnection. Ultimately the energy converts to the particles'kinetic and thermal energy, resulting in the acceleration and heating of the ions and electrons (e.g.,

Magnetic reconnection is a very important physical process that converts magnetic energy into particle energy accompanied by the change of magnetic field topology, which is responsible for many explosive phenomena in space, astrophysical, and laboratory plasmas (

In this paper, we investigate the fermion tunneling through the event horizon of a Vaidya black hole which is non-stationary. We further take into account the particle's selfgravitation in the dynamical background space-time, and calculate the tunneling probability. The result shows that the tunneling probability is related not only to the change of Bekenstein-Hawking entropy but also to the integral of the changing horizon, which is different from the case of stationary black holes.

Using the Parker Solar Probe data taken in the inner heliosphere, we investigate the power and spatial anisotropy of magnetic field spectra at kinetic scales (i.e., around sub-ion scales) in solar wind turbulence in the inner heliosphere. We find that strong anisotropy of the magnetic spectra occurs at kinetic scales with the strongest power in the perpendicular direction with respect to the local magnetic field (forming an angle θ B with the mean flow velocity). The spectral index of the magnetic spectra varies from −3.2 to −5.8 when the angle θ B changes from 90° to 180° (or 0°), indicating that strong anisotropy of the spectral indices occurs at kinetic scales in the solar wind turbulence. Using a diagnosis based on the magnetic helicity, we show that the anisotropy of the spectral indices can be explained by the nature of the plasma modes that carry the cascade at kinetic scales. We discuss our findings in light of existing theories and current development in the field.