Solar wind as a natural laboratory: structure, turbulence, and discontinuities

Supervisor: Prof. RNDr. Jana Šafránková, DrSc.
ConsultantDoc. RNDr. František Němec, Ph.D., Mgr. Alexander Pitňa, Ph.D., Mgr. Ďurovcová Tereza
Status: Available

Abstract:

The solar wind is a weakly collisional plasma that is in a turbulent state, thus it is a unique laboratory for study of turbulence in astrophysical plasmas. The results of solar wind studies can be scaled to diverse environments ranging from interstellar medium through plasmas in industrial applications up to controlled nuclear fusion in tokamaks. Using many spacecraft operating in past, at present and in a near future, the project addresses all scales accessible by the data series ranging from the solar cycle through the MHD scale up to ion dissipation range with motivation to clarify the understanding of the processes of dissipation (or dispersion) of turbulent energy that are still under debate. In details, we suppose to study: (1) an evolution of turbulence in the solar wind on different scales, (2) a role of significant discontinuities in this process, (3) changes of helium abundance through the solar wind propagation to the Earth, (4) an evolution of turbulence in the foreshock/magnetosheath, and (5) the behavior of heavier ions in the dissipation processes.

The supervisor/consultant to be decided later according to the topic chosen.