Evidence of Large-Scale Quantization in Space Plasmas

Abstract

Abstract:In plasmas, Debye screening structures the possible correlations between particles. We identify a phase space minimum h * in non-equilibrium space plasmas that connects the energy of particles in a Debye sphere to an equivalent wave frequency. In particular, while there is no a priori reason to expect a single value of h * across plasmas, we find a very similar value of h * ≈ (7.5 ± 2.4)×10 −22 J·s using four independent methods:(1) Ulysses solar wind measurements, (2) space plasmas that typically reside in stationary states out of thermal equilibrium and spanning a broad range of physical properties, (3) an entropic limit emerging from statistical mechanics, (4) waiting-time distributions of explosive events in space plasmas. Finding a quasi-constant value for the phase space minimum in a variety of different plasmas, similar to the classical Planck constant but 12 orders of magnitude larger may be revealing a new type of quantization in many plasmas and correlated systems more generally.

Electrostatic shielding in plasmas and the physical meaning of the Debye length

“…Then, we show that the standard deviation of the position in the charge distribution of the plasma is given by √ < x 2 > ∼ = λ D , as was arrived at by different means by Livadiotis and McComas (2013a). This result is for 1-D shielding (d = 1), while for any d, the positional variance and standard deviation becomes…”

“…The physical meaning of the Debye length 343 2001; Saito et al 2000;Leubner 2004;Raadu and Shafiq 2007;Hellberg et al 2009;Livadiotis and McComas 2009, 2010a-c, 2011a, 2011b, 2012, 2013aTribeche et al 2009;Le Roux et al 2010;Eslami et al 2011;Kourakis et al 2012;Yoon 2012;Yoon et al 2012;Bains et al 2013;Saberian and Esfandyari-Kalejahi 2013).…”

Understanding Kappa Distributions: A Toolbox for Space Science and Astrophysics

“…Livadiotis and McComas (2013c) recently began developing this concept for non-equilibrium space plasmas, and showed that a Debye sphere of correlated particles is characterized by a minimum energy exchange and lifetime, leading to a large-scale phase-space quantization, 12 orders of magnitude larger than the Planck constant.…”

“…The 1-particle kappa distribution of energy can be associated with the waiting time distributions of explosive events (Livadiotis and McComas 2013c).…”

Derivation of the entropic formula for the statistical mechanics of space plasmas

“…) Kappa distributions describe numerous space plasma populations. Several examples are the following: (i) the inner heliosphere, including solar wind (e.g., Maksimovic et al, 1997;Pierrard et al, 1999;Mann et al, 2002;Marsch, 2006;Zouganelis, 2008;Štverák et al, 2009;Livadiotis and McComas, 2013a;Yoon, 2014;Pierrard and Pieters, 2015;Pavlos et al, 2016), solar spectra (e.g., Dzifčáková and Dudík, 2013;Dzifčáková, et al, 2015), solar corona (e.g., Owocki and Scudder, 1983;Vocks et al, 2008;Lee et al, 2013;Cranmer, 2014), solar energetic particles (e.g., Xiao et al, 2008;Laming et al, 2013), corotating interaction regions (e.g., Chotoo et al, 2000), and related solar flares (e.g., Mann et al, 2009;Livadiotis and McComas, 2013b;Bian et al, 2014;Jeffrey et al, 2016); (ii) planetary magnetospheres, including magnetosheath (e.g., Formisano et al, 1973;Ogasawara et al, 2013), magnetopause (e.g., Ogasawara et al, 2015), magnetotail (e.g., Grabbe, 2000), ring current (e.g., Pisarenko et al, 2002), plasma sheet (e.g., Christon, 1987;Wang et al, 2003;Kletzing et al, 2003), magnetospheric substorms (e.g., Hapgood et al, 2011), aurora (e.g., Ogasawara et al, 2017), magnetospheres of giant planets, such as Jovian (e.g., Collier and Hamilton, 1995;…”