Small Scale Plasma Waves and Heating within Kelvin-Helmholtz Instabilities at Earth’s Magnetopause

The Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability (KHI) is common at the magnetopause boundary enclosing Earth’s magnetosphere. The KHI drives several secondary processes which can transport plasma from the solar wind into Earth’s magnetosphere and convert kinetic energy in the plasma to thermal energy. Previous studies have shown the KHI and its associated secondary processes play an important role in the heating of ions and could help explain the observed asymmetry between ion populations in the dawn and dusk flanks of the magnetosphere. The contribution of the KHI to heating at the electron scale, however, is not well understood. Until the launch of the Magnetosphere Multiscale (MMS) mission in 2015, measurements of electron scale processes were not available. This study uses data collected by MMS between 2015 and 2020 to identify waves and potential sources of plasma heating between the ion and electron scales.