Verscharen, D;
Klein, KG;
Maruca, BA;
(2019)
The multi-scale nature of the solar wind.
Living Reviews in Solar Physics
, 16
, Article 5. 10.1007/s41116-019-0021-0.
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Abstract
The solar wind is a magnetized plasma and as such exhibits collective plasma behavior associated with its characteristic spatial and temporal scales. The characteristic length scales include the size of the heliosphere, the collisional mean free paths of all species, their inertial lengths, their gyration radii, and their Debye lengths. The characteristic timescales include the expansion time, the collision times, and the periods associated with gyration, waves, and oscillations. We review the past and present research into the multi-scale nature of the solar wind based on in-situ spacecraft measurements and plasma theory. We emphasize that couplings of processes across scales are important for the global dynamics and thermodynamics of the solar wind. We describe methods to measure in-situ properties of particles and fields. We then discuss the role of expansion effects, non-equilibrium distribution functions, collisions, waves, turbulence, and kinetic microinstabilities for the multi-scale plasma evolution.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The multi-scale nature of the solar wind |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s41116-019-0021-0 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s41116-019-0021-0 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
| Keywords: | Solar wind · Spacecraft measurements · Coulomb collisions · Plasma waves and turbulence · Kinetic instabilities |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Space and Climate Physics |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10087771 |
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