Nonresonant Charged-Particle Acceleration by Electrostatic Waves Propagating across Fluctuating Magnetic Field.

In this Letter, we demonstrate the effect of nonresonant charged-particle acceleration by an electrostatic wave propagating across the background magnetic field. We show that in the absence of resonance (i.e., when particle velocities are much smaller than the wave phase velocity) particles can be accelerated by electrostatic waves provided that the adiabaticity of particle motion is destroyed by magnetic field fluctuations. Thus, in a system with stochastic particle dynamics the electrostatic wave should be damped even in the absence of Landau resonance. The proposed mechanism is responsible for the acceleration of particles that cannot be accelerated via resonant wave-particle interactions. Simplicity of this straightforward acceleration scenario indicates a wide range of possible applications.