Modeling energetic electron distributions in the solar wind

Summary form only given. Observations have regularly shown variations of electron distributions in the solar wind. It was observed that electron properties, including the shape of their energy distributions, are well correlated with plasma streams speed, and implicitly with their origin. While Kappa models have been found appropriate for modeling electron distributions in the slow wind, which has its origin in the Sun´s hot corona, the more energetic (high-speed) streams coming from the Sun´s photosphere are cooler and better fitted by Maxwellians. However, in the magnetic sectors the high-speed solar wind streams superimpose and, eventually, catch up with the upstream slow wind, leading to more complex structures (e.g., compressed plasma in co-rotating interaction regions), where the observed electron distributions present multistream deviations from the simple models. For such a realistic perspective, the new distribution models discussed here propose to refine the existing Kappa and Maxwellian models and provide powerful ability for describing the fast solar wind streams as well as their coupling with both the slow wind and the magnetosphere.