The electron foreshock

Abstract

ISEE particle and wave data are noted to furnish substantial support for the basic features of the velocity dispersed model at the foreshock boundary that was proposed by Filbert and Kellogg (1979). Among many remaining discrepancies between this model and observation, it is noted that unstable reduced velocity distributions have been discovered behind the thin boundary proposed by the model, and that these are at suprathermal energies lying far below those explainable in terms of an oscillating, two-stream instability. Although the long-theorized unstable beam of electrons has been found in the foreshock, there is still no ready explanation of the means by which it could have gotten there.