Abstract

We study the preferential heating and differential acceleration of minor ions by dissipation of ion-acoustic waves (IAWs) generated by parametric instabilities of a finite-amplitude monochromatic Alfven-cyclotron pump wave. We consider the associated kinetic effects of Landau damping and nonlinear pitch-angle scattering of protons and a particles in the tenuous plasma of coronal holes and the fast solar wind. Various data collected by Wind spacecraft show signatures for a local transverse heating of the minor ions, presumably by Alfven-cyclotron wave dissipation, and an unexpected parallel heating by a so far unknown mechanism. Here, we present the results from a set of 1.5 dimensional hybrid simulations in search for a plausible explanation for the observed field-aligned kinetic features in the fast solar wind minor ions. We investigate the origin and regulation of ion relative drifts and temperature anisotropies in low plasma beta, fast solar wind conditions. Depending on their initial drifts, both ion species can heat up not only transversely through cyclotron resonance and non-resonant wave-particle interactions, but also strongly in the parallel direction by Landau damping of the daughter IAWs. We discuss the dependence of the relative ion drifts and temperature anisotropies on the plasma beta of the individual species and we describe the effect of the pump wave amplitude on the ion heating and acceleration.