CAREER: Toward Understanding Solar Wind Turbulence in the Inner Heliosphere

GSTDTAP

项目编号	1752827
	CAREER: Toward Understanding Solar Wind Turbulence in the Inner Heliosphere
	Jean Perez
主持机构	Florida Institute of Technology
项目开始年	2018
	2018-04-15
项目结束日期	2023-03-31
资助机构	US-NSF
项目类别	Continuing grant
项目经费	135474(USD)
国家	美国
语种	英语
英文摘要	Determining the exact mechanisms that heat the corona and accelerate the solar wind are two of the most important problems in solar-heliospheric physics, as well as one of the top priority goals of the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) mission. This mission, which is scheduled to launch in the summer of 2018, will visit the near-Sun regions never explored before by any spacecraft, providing groundbreaking in-situ and close-by remote sensing measurements of the inner heliosphere between 9.5 and 55 solar radii (measured from the center of the Sun), reaching up to six times closer than the Helios mission. This five-year CAREER project is aimed at improving present understanding of the evolution and structure of turbulence close to the Sun. The project will also help elucidate how energy is transported from the solar surface to its upper atmosphere and how this energy is dissipated to heat the solar corona and accelerate the solar wind. One of the main broader impacts of this project is that it will enhance the scientific return of the PSP mission by laying the theoretical foundations for interpretation of PSP measurements, which will have repercussions in a number of other outstanding questions in heliospheric physics. The project team will introduce a novel and user friendly software tool that will allow students to use numerical simulations, with minimal knowledge of scientific computing, to enhance learning of introductory space plasma physics. The role that numerical simulations will play in the introductory courses will closely mirror the role that simulations play in modern plasma research, i.e., to facilitate understanding of the underlying physics when analytical progress is no longer possible. The software interface will allow students to quickly solve numerical problems to gain intuition from the numerical solution to help reinforce understanding of the underlying concepts. Another main broader impact of this project is that, at its conclusion, a fully tested and working version of this tool will be made available online under the GNU open-source license, to allow for the expansion of its plasma physics problems base and use in other research institutions. This software tool will also be adapted to disseminate with the general public the research outcomes of this project, and inform them on the relevance of space plasma research and the revolutionary discoveries that the PSP will enable in the decades to come. The research and EPO agenda of this CAREER project supports the Strategic Goals of the AGS Division in discovery, learning, diversity, and interdisciplinary research. This CAREER is expected to provide an improved understanding of the origin and evolution of turbulence in the near-Sun environment, from the Alfven waves observed in the low corona to turbulent fluctuations in the upper corona and the solar wind. This investigation will combine theory, high-resolution numerical simulations and existing observations to lay the groundwork for the interpretation of the unprecedented measurements by the PSP. The project aims to accomplish the following specific science goals: (i) Investigate how turbulence evolves from AW motions in the solar corona to fully developed AW turbulence at larger heliocentric distances; (ii) identify scaling laws governing the inertial-range power spectrum, the role of cross- helicity and residual energy in the turbulence and how such properties depend on the heliocentric distance; (iii) investigate the role that this turbulence plays in power laws of the magnetic energy spectrum of fluctuations observed by Helios measurements between 0.3 AU and 0.4 AU; and, (iv) establish predictions of the properties of turbulent fluctuations that the PSP will measure. This CAREER investigation is also timely, because it will lay the theoretical and numerical framework needed for interpretation of the PSP signals before the first measurements become available at the end of 2018. The outcome of this research combined with the future PSP observations will not only contribute to expand our knowledge of the fundamentals of Alfvenic turbulence in this region, but will lead to transformative advances towards determining the viability of Alfvenic turbulence as a major mechanism for the heating of the corona and the acceleration of the solar wind. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
文献类型	项目
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/72508
专题	环境与发展全球科技态势
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Jean Perez.CAREER: Toward Understanding Solar Wind Turbulence in the Inner Heliosphere.2018.