Turbulent Heating and Anisotropy in the Solar Wind: A Numerical Study (Springer Theses)

This book presents two important new findings. First, it demonstrates from first principles that turbulent heating offers an explanation for the non-adiabatic decay of proton temperature in solar wind. Until now, this was only proved with reduced or phenomenological models. Second, the book demonstrates that the two types of anisotropy of turbulent fluctuations that are observed in solar wind at 1AU originate not only from two distinct classes of conditions near the Sun but also from the imbalance in Alfvn wave populations. These anisotropies do not affect the overall turbulent heating if we take into account the relation observed in solar wind between anisotropy and Alfvn wave imbalance. In terms of the methods used to obtain these achievements, the author shows the need to find a very delicate balance between turbulent decay and expansion losses, so as to directly solve the magnetohydrodynamic equations, including the wind expansion effects. Victor Montagud Camps holds a bachelor degrees in mathematics and physics from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) and a Master's degree in plasma physics from the Universit Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC). He obtained his Ph.D. in 2018 from the Universit Paris-Saclay (prepared at Universit Paris-Sud) under the supervision of Dr. Roland Grappin and Dr. Filippo Pantellini. During his thesis he has been author and co-author of scientific papers published in The Astrophysical Journal, Solar Physics and Il nuovo cimento. He now works at the department of Surface and Plasma Science of Charles University (Czech Republic) as a postdoctoral fellow. Introduction.- Solar Wind.- Plasma description.- Turbulence.- Solar Wind turbulence.- Plan of this thesis.- The Maltese Cross revisited.- Parameters and initial conditions.- Dening spectral properties in EBM simulations.- Results.- Discussion.- Can the Maltese Cross heat?.- Paper ApJ 2018: "Turbulent Heating between 0.2 and 1 au: A Numerical Study".- Heating fast winds.- Conclusions and future work.- Conclusions.- Future work: Anisotropy temperature description.- Appendix.