Related papers: R{\'e}flexions sur la puissance motrice du Soleil
The challenge in solar energy today is not the cost of photovoltaic (PV) electricity generation, already competing with fossil fuel prices, but rather utility-scale energy storage and flexibility in supply. Low-cost thermal energy storage…
Even if it tends to hide more often in the current autumnal season, our host star, the Sun, is the principal source of energy on our planet. It has a luminosity of 3.828e26 Watts, and despite that we receive only 2 parts per billion of…
The ability to accurately forecast power generation from renewable sources is nowadays recognised as a fundamental skill to improve the operation of power systems. Despite the general interest of the power community in this topic, it is not…
Most solar applications and systems can be reliably used to generate electricity and power in many homes and offices. Recently, there is an increase in many solar required systems that can be found not only in electricity generation but…
The Sun has long been considered a constant star, to the extent that its total irradiance was termed the solar constant. It required radiometers in space to detect the small variations in solar irradiance on timescales of the solar rotation…
The magnetic cycle of the Sun, as manifested in the cyclic appearance of sunspots, significantly influences our space environment and space-based technologies by generating what is now termed as space weather. Long-term variation in the…
Hot carrier solar cells allow potential efficiency close to the thermodynamical limit in ideal conditions. However, the feasability of such devices has not been clearly stated so far and only ideal cells were considered in previous studies.…
The magnetic field plays a crucial role in heating the solar corona, but the exact energy release mechanism(s) is(are) still unknown. Here, we investigate in detail, the process of magnetic energy release in a situation where two initially…
The question why the solar corona is much hotter than the visible solar surface still puzzles solar researchers. Most theories of the coronal heating involve a tight coupling between the coronal magnetic field and the associated thermal…
The Sun's corona is millions of degrees hotter than its 5,000 K photosphere. This heating enigma is typically addressed by invoking the deposition at coronal heights of non-thermal energy generated by the interplay between convection and…
Reheating is a process where the energy density of a dominant component of the universe other than radiation, such as a matter component, is transferred into radiation. It is usually assumed that the temperature of the universe decreases…
In this work, a liquid model of the Sun is presented wherein the entire solar mass is viewed as a high density/high energy plasma. This model challenges our current understanding of the densities associated with the internal layers of the…
Coronal heating refers to the physical processes that shape and structure the corona of the Sun and are responsible for its multi-million Kelvin temperatures. These processes are revealed in a number of different observational…
This paper gives a personal global point of view on two sciences: electronics and photonics towards plasmonics and solar energy conversion. The new research directions in these two sciences are pointed out by comparison and in the…
A huge amount of thermal energy is available close to material surfaces in radiative and non-radiative states, which can be useful for matter characterization or for energy devices. One way to harness this near-field energy is to scatter it…
The Earth's primary source of energy is the radiant energy generated by the Sun, which is referred to as solar irradiance, or total solar irradiance (TSI) when all of the radiation is measured. A minor change in the solar irradiance can…
Our Sun, primarily composed of ionized hydrogen and helium, has a surface temperature of 5777~K and a radius $R_\odot \approx 696,000$ km. In the outer $R_\odot/3$, energy transport is accomplished primarily by convection. Using typical…
Coronal jets represent important manifestations of ubiquitous solar transients, which may be the source of significant mass and energy input to the upper solar atmosphere and the solar wind. While the energy involved in a jet-like event is…
Thermal convection is one of the main mechanisms of heat transport and mixing in stars in general and also in the photospheric layers which emit the radiation that we observe with astronomical instruments. The present lecture notes first…
Convective and radiative cooling are the two principle mechanisms by which the Earth's surface transfers heat into the atmosphere and that shape surface temperature. However, this partitioning is not sufficiently constrained by energy and…