Comment on “PIC simulations of circularly polarised Alfvén wave phase mixing: a new mechanism for electron acceleration in collisionless plasmas” by Tsiklauri et al.

¹ Centre d'étude des Environnements Terrestre et Planétaires, 10-12 Av. de l'Europe, 78140 Vélizy, France e-mail: fabrice.mottez@cetp.ipsl.fr
² Centre d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements, 9 Av. Colonel Roche, 31400 Toulouse, France

Received: 20 September 2005
Accepted: 18 November 2005

Abstract

Tsiklauri et al. recently published a theoretical model of electron acceleration by Alfvén waves in a nonuniform collisionless plasmas. We compare their work with a series of results published earlier by an another team, of which Tsiklauri et al. were probably unaware. We show that these two series of works, apparently conducted independently, lead to the same conclusions. This reinforces the theoretical consistency of the model.