We demonstrate that satellite observations of intense transverse ion energization could be explained by stochastic ion heating on short perpendicular wavelength electrostatic waves and structures produced by the decay of dispersive Alfvén waves (DAW). This mechanism is related to the chaotization of ion orbits which leads to strong stochastic heating when the electric field gradient fulfills the inequality ∂ E x /∂ x > Ω B 0 (here Ω is the ion gyrofrequency and B 0 is the ambient magnetic field). We also show that the energy source for this process is provided from dissipation of the Poynting flux of DAW, which appear to form an energy cascade from large scales λ ⊥ ∼ ~ kilometers down to λ ⊥ ∼ ~50 m where the dissipation through the ion heating is observed.
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Stasiewicz et al. (2000) studied this question.