Basics of the Solar Wind

About this book

The Sun continually ejects matter into space, blowing a huge bubble of supersonic plasma. This solar wind bathes the whole solar system and shapes all planetary environments. The growth of space technology has considerably increased our knowledge of this medium.

This 2007 book presents an introduction to the subject, starting with basic principles and including all the latest advances from space exploration and theory. It contains a short introduction to plasma physics and discusses the structure of the solar interior and atmosphere, the production of solar wind and its perturbations. It explains the objects of the Solar System, from dust to comets and planets, and their interaction with the solar wind. The final sections explore the astrophysical point of view. The topics are treated at various levels of difficulty both qualitatively and quantitatively. Basics of the Solar Wind will appeal to graduate students and researchers in earth and atmospheric sciences, and astrophysics.

Contents

Preface

Part I. The Wind From the Sun: an Introduction
1. A brief history of ideas
2. Looking at the Sun
3. Observing the solar wind

Part II. Toolkit for Space Plasma Physics
4. What is a plasma?
5. Dynamics of a charged particle
6. Many particles: from kinetics to MHD
7. Basic tools for ionisation
8. Problems

Part III. Anatomy of the Sun
9. An (almost) ordinary star
10. Structure and dynamics
11. Some guesses on solar magnetism
12. Problems

Part IV. The Outer Solar Atmosphere
13. From the photosphere to the corona
14. Force balance and magnetic structures
15. Energy balance
16. Some prominent species
17. Time variability
18. Coronal heating: Boojums at work?
19. Hydrostatic instability of the corona
20. Problems

Part V. How does the solar wind blow?
21. The basic problem
22. Simple fluid theory
23. Letting the temperature vary
24. A mixture of fluids
25. Kinetic descriptions
26. Building a 'full' theory?
27. Problems

Part VI. Structure and Perturbations
28. Basic large-scale magnetic field
29. Three-dimensional structure during the solar cycle
30. Major perturbations
31. Waves and turbulence
32. Minor constituents
33. Problems

Part VII. Bodies in the Wind: Dust, Asteroids, Planets and Comets
34. Bodies in the wind
35. Basics of the interaction
36. The magnetospheric engine
37. Physics of heliospheric dust grains
38. Comets
7.6. Problems

Part VIII. The Solar Wind in the Universe
39. The frontier of the heliosphere
40. Cosmic rays
41. Examples of winds in the universe
42. Problems

Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

Nicole Meyer-Vernet is Research Director at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, and a senior scientist at the Observatoire de Paris. She received the 'E. Dechelle' de l'Academie des Sciences and has been involved with a number of spacecraft investigations of the earth's ionosphere, the solar wind, and cometary and planetary environments.