Research Opportunities in Plasma Astrophysics
Abstract
Major scientific questions and research opportunities are described on 10 unprioritized plasma astrophysics topics: (1) magnetic reconnection, (2) collisionless shocks and particle acceleration, (3) waves and turbulence, (4) magnetic dynamos, (5) interface and shear instabilities, (6) angular momentum transport, (7) dusty plasmas, (8) radiative hydrodynamics, (9) relativistic, pair-dominated and strongly magnetized plasmas, (10) jets and outflows. Note that this is a conference report from a Workshop on Opportunities in Plasma Astrophysics (WOPA, https://w3.pppl.gov/conferences/2010/WOPA/) in January 2010, that attracted broad representation from the community and was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Science Foundation, American Physical Society's Topical Group for Plasma Astrophysics and Division of Plasma Physics, and Center for Magnetic Self-Organization in Laboratory and Astrophysical Plasmas. Although there has been much planning and many developments in both science and infrastructure since the report was written, most of the motivation, priorities, problems and technical challenges discussed therein remain unaddressed and are relevant at the time of posting.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2203.02406,
title = {Research Opportunities in Plasma Astrophysics},
author = {Stuart Bale and Amitava Bhattacharjee and Fausto Cattaneo and Jemes Drake and Hantao Ji and Marty Lee and Hui Li and Edison Liang and Marc Pound and Stewart Prager and Eliot Quataert and Bruce Remington and Robert Rosner and Dmitri Ryutov and Edward Thomas and Ellen Zweibel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.02406},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
The WOPA committee members are alphabetically listed as authors above. Each chapter was authored by a working group with their full membership listed in Appendix D. Conference participants are listed in Appendix B. Editor is Patti Wieser. 130 pages, 10 chapters, 4 appendices, 26 figures