Classes taught
- Space plasma
- Diagnostics in space plasmas
- Introduction to statistical data processing in the surface and plasma science
- Plasma waves
- Selected topics from space plasmas
- Physical processes in Solar System
- Magnetohydrodynamics, hot and laser plasma
- Measurement methods, modelling and processing of experimental data
- Programming in IDL – Data processing and visualisation
Other related faculty classes
NEVF537 – Selected topics from space plasmas (2/0, C)
František Němec, Jiří Pavlů
Structure of the inner magnetosphere and related processes. Dust interaction with elemtary particles – introduction to dusty (or complex) plasmas (impacts and applications). The course is assigned to postgraduate students and it is held as one-week intensive lectures in academic years "even/odd," only.
- Overview of the inner magnetosphere: Individual regions forming the inner magnetosphere. Dipole magnetic field and coordinate systems.
- Radiation belts and ring current: History, discovery of radiation belts. Particle drifts in planetary magnetic field, adiabatic invariants, loss cone. Inner and outer radiation belt, South Atlantic Anomaly. Radial diffusion, pitch angle scattering, wave-particle interactions.
- Plasmasphere: History, discovery of the plasmasphere. Reasons of its formation, plasmapause, stormtime changes. Means of observation, experimental results and models. Structure and dynamics at smaller scales.
- Ionosphere: Photoionization, Chapman production function, impact ionization, recombination. Ionospheric layers, collision frequencies, conductivity and ionospheric currents. Ionosondes, radio occultation methods. Planetary ionospheres.
- Dust interaction with elementary particles and plasma: Emissions properties of small objects - overview of dust charging processes. Surface potential of dust grain. Grain formation, clustering, destruction processes. Forces on particles in complex plasmas. Methods of emission observations from dust (particle traps, trapping within plasma). Dust in magnetized complex plasmas (tokamaks).
- Complex (dusty) plasmas: Definition of dusty plasmas and dust in the plasma. Waves and instabilities in complex plasmas. Plasma crystals. Survey of experimental observations (e.g., in rf and dc discharges, microgravity experiments).
- Dust in space: Dust in space (planetary rings, comets, interplanetary and interstellar dust). Micrometeorites and dust in the upper mesosphere - noctilucent clouds (NLC), polar mesospheric summer/winter echoes (PMSE/PMWE). Survey of spacecraft observations.