Student: Houfek Pavel
Školitel: Ing. Jan Souček, Ph.D. (ÚFA AV ČR)
Konzultant: Prof. RNDr. Ondřej Santolík, Dr.
Stav práce: zadaná
Anotace:
The Solar Orbiter spacecraft has been providing a large volume of high quality measurements of plasma waves and energetic particles. The new data offer a unique opportunity to study the generation of the plasma waves at the source of the Type II or Type III radio emissions, but also ion-acoustic waves and whistler mode waves at the lower frequency part of the spectrum associated with interplanetary shocks and other plasma disturbances.
The dynamics of those waves is complex and to make progress in the understanding of the micro-physics of the wave generation and interaction with the plasma particles, the data need to be compared with theoretical and numerical models. In the recent years, several high quality numerical codes for solving of the plasma dispersion relation (e.g. ALPS [2]) and simulating local plasma dynamics via particle in cell simulations (iPic3D, QuickPIC) have become publicly available and can be used for this task.
The team at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IAP) is responsible for operations and data processing of data from the Time Domain Sampler (TDS) unit of RPW, designed and built at the institute, also possessing unique expertise in the interpretation.
The student is expected to
• familiarize himself/herself with the state of the art in the research of the plasma waves observed in the solar wind by RPW-TDS,
• learn to use the publicly available numerical codes to simulate the instabilities of electron ion/beam in the solar wind plasma,
• analyze the detailed measurements from the RPW-TDS instrument, particle measurements from the EPD and SWA and the MAG magnetometer and compare those to the results of the numerical modeling.
The applicant can also be involved in instrument operations and data calibration. The research shall be conducted in collaboration with other scientific institutes involved in the Solar Orbiter mission.
Literature:
[1] M. Maksimovic et al., The Solar Orbiter Radio and Plasma Waves (RPW) instrument, A&A 642 A12, 2020, DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201936214
[2] D. Verscharen et al., ALPS: the Arbitrary Linear Plasma Solver, Journal of Plasma Physics , Volume 84 , Issue 4 , August 2018 , 905840403, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022377818000739
[3] Malaspina, D. M., I. H. Cairns, and R. E. Ergun (2011), Dependence of Langmuir wave polarization on electron beam speed in type III solar radio bursts, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L13101, doi:10.1029/2011GL047642.
[4] Graham, D. B., and I. H. Cairns (2013a), Electrostatic decay of Langmuir/z-mode waves in type III solar radio bursts, J. Geophys. Res. Space Physics, 118, 3968–3984, doi:10.1002/jgra.50402.
Further journal papers upon recommendation of supervisor.