Journal article
A prospectus on kinetic heliophysics
Physics of plasmas, Vol.24(5), 055907
05/01/2017
DOI: 10.1063/1.4983993
PMCID: PMC5648573
PMID: 29104421
Abstract
Under the low density and high temperature conditions typical of heliospheric plasmas, the macroscopic evolution of the heliosphere is strongly affected by the kinetic plasma physics governing fundamental microphysical mechanisms. Kinetic turbulence, collisionless magnetic reconnection, particle acceleration, and kinetic instabilities are four poorly understood, grand-challenge problems that lie at the new frontier of kinetic heliophysics. The increasing availability of high cadence and high phase-space resolution measurements of particle velocity distributions by current and upcoming spacecraft missions and of massively parallel nonlinear kinetic simulations of weakly collisional heliospheric plasmas provides the opportunity to transform our understanding of these kinetic mechanisms through the full utilization of the information contained in the particle velocity distributions. Several major considerations for future investigations of kinetic heliophysics are examined. Turbulent dissipation followed by particle heating is highlighted as an inherently two-step process in weakly collisional plasmas, distinct from the more familiar case in fluid theory. Concerted efforts must be made to tackle the big-data challenge of visualizing the high-dimensional (3D-3V) phase space of kinetic plasma theory through physics-based reductions. Furthermore, the development of innovative analysis methods that utilize full velocity-space measurements, such as the field-particle correlation technique, will enable us to gain deeper insight into these four grand-challenge problems of kinetic heliophysics. A systems approach to tackle the multi-scale problem of heliophysics through a rigorous connection between the kinetic physics at microscales and the self-consistent evolution of the heliosphere at macroscales will propel the field of kinetic heliophysics into the future. Published by AIP Publishing.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- A prospectus on kinetic heliophysics
- Creators
- Gregory G. Howes - Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242, USA
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Physics of plasmas, Vol.24(5), 055907
- Publisher
- AIP Publishing
- DOI
- 10.1063/1.4983993
- PMID
- 29104421
- PMCID
- PMC5648573
- ISSN
- 1070-664X
- eISSN
- 1089-7674
- Number of pages
- 12
- Grant note
- NNX10AC91G / NASA; National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) PHY-10033446; CAREER AGS-1054061 / NSF; National Science Foundation (NSF) ACI-1053575; PHY090084 / National Science Foundation through NSF XSEDE Award DE-SC0014599 / DOE; United States Department of Energy (DOE) 1054061 / Div Atmospheric & Geospace Sciences; National Science Foundation (NSF); NSF - Directorate for Geosciences (GEO)
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 05/01/2017
- Academic Unit
- Physics and Astronomy
- Record Identifier
- 9984429030002771
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