DOUBLE-LAYERS ARE NOT PARTICLE ACCELERATORS

It is pointed out that the continuing advocacy of electrostatic double layers as particle accelerators in the aurora and other space and astrophysical plasmas is fundamentally unsound. It is suggested furthermore that there is little reason to invoke static or quasistatic electric fields as the cause of auroral electron acceleration. Stochastic acceleration by electrostatic wave turbulence appears to present a natural explanation for this and for electron acceleration in other space and astrophysical plasmas.