Related papers: Turbulent Heating between 0.2 and 1 au: A Numerica…
Identifying the heating mechanisms of the solar corona and the driving mechanisms of solar wind are key challenges in understanding solar physics. A full three-dimensional compressible magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation was conducted to…
The first observed connection between kinetic instabilities driven by proton temperature anisotropy and estimated energy cascade rates in the turbulent solar wind is reported using measurements from the Wind spacecraft at 1 AU. We find…
From the the solar photosphere to the outer heliosphere, the Sun's plasma properties are fluctuating with a broad range of temporal and spatial scales. In fact, a turbulent cascade of energy from large to small scales is a frequently…
We present a new global model of the solar corona, including the low corona, the transition region and the top of chromosphere. The realistic 3D magnetic field is simulated using the data from the photospheric magnetic field measurements.…
A connection between kinetic processes and intermittent turbulence is observed in the solar wind plasma using measurements from the Wind spacecraft at 1 AU. In particular, kinetic effects such as temperature anisotropy and plasma heating…
The first two orbits of the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) spacecraft have enabled the first in situ measurements of the solar wind down to a heliocentric distance of 0.17 au (or 36 Rs). Here, we present an analysis of this data to study solar…
In the near future, Parker Solar Probe will put theories about the dynamics and nature of the transition between the solar corona and the solar wind to stringent tests. The most popular mechanism aimed to explain the dynamics of the nascent…
We present a cascade model for turbulence in weakly collisional plasmas that follows the nonlinear cascade of energy from the large scales of driving in the MHD regime to the small scales of the kinetic Alfven wave regime where the…
The temperature of the gas in molecular clouds is a key determinant of the characteristic mass of star formation. Ambipolar diffusion (AD) is considered one of the most important heating mechanisms in weakly ionized molecular clouds. In…
We obtain scatter broadened images of the Crab Nebula at 80 MHz as it transits through the inner solar wind in June 2016 and 2017. These images are anisotropic, with the major axis oriented perpendicular to the radially outward coronal…
Direct evidence of an inertial-range turbulent energy cascade has been provided by spacecraft observations in heliospheric plasmas. In the solar wind, the average value of the derived heating rate near 1 au is $\sim 10^{3}\,…
The Reynolds number, Re, is an important quantity for describing a turbulent flow. It tells us about the bandwidth over which energy can cascade from large scales to smaller ones, prior to the onset of dissipation. However, calculating it…
Protons in the solar corona and heliosphere exhibit anisotropic velocity distributions, violation of magnetic moment conservation, and a general lack of thermal equilibrium with the other particle species. There is no agreement about the…
In this Letter we study the connection between the large-scale dynamics of the turbulence cascade and particle heating on kinetic scales. We find that the inertial range turbulence amplitude ($\delta B_i$; measured in the range of 0.01-0.1…
The proton temperature anisotropy in the solar wind exhibits apparent bounds which are compatible with the theoretical constraints imposed by temperature-anisotropy driven kinetic instabilities. Recent statistical analyses based on…
Solar wind is probably the best laboratory to study turbulence in astrophysical plasmas. In addition to the presence of magnetic field, the differences with neutral fluid isotropic turbulence are: weakness of collisional dissipation and…
We explore a mechanism, entirely new to the fast solar wind, of electron heating by lower hybrid waves to explain the shift to higher charge states observed in various elements in the fast wind at 1 A.U. relative to the original coronal…
Evidence for inhomogeneous heating in the interplanetary plasma near current sheets dynamically generated by magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence is obtained using measurements from the ACE spacecraft. These coherent structures only…
We investigate several key questions of plasma heating in open-field regions of the corona that connect to the solar wind. We present results for a model of Alfven-wave-driven turbulence for three typical open magnetic field structures: a…
One of the important discoveries made by Voyager-2 is the nonadiabatic radial profile of the solar wind proton temperature. This phenomenon has been studied for several decades. The dissipation of turbulence energy has been proposed as the…