Parallel proton fire hose instability in the expanding solar wind: Hybrid simulations

We report a study of the properties of the parallel proton fire hose instability comparing the results obtained by the linear analysis, from one‐dimensional (1‐D) standard hybrid simulations and 1‐D hybrid expanding box simulations. The three different approaches converge toward the same instability threshold condition which is in good agreement with in situ observations, suggesting that such instability is relevant in the solar wind context. We investigate also the effect of the wave‐particle interactions on shaping the proton distribution function and on the evolution of the spectrum of the magnetic fluctuations during the expansion. We find that the resonant interaction can provide the proton distribution function to depart from the bi‐Maxwellian form.