Kinetic Aspects of the Solar Wind

Details Kinetic Aspects of the Solar Wind Kinetic Aspects of the Solar Wind

May 2001

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001agusm..sh22e07m&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2001, abstract #SH22E-07 INVITED

Physics

2164 Solar Wind Plasma, 2169 Sources Of The Solar Wind, 7509 Corona, 7511 Coronal Holes

Scientific paper

One of the main points which makes the solar wind difficult to model is the fact that this medium undergoes a transition between a highly collisional regime in the very low corona and an almost collisionless one at larger distances. The transition between these two regimes can be quantified by the ratio λ /H, where λ is the collisional mean free path for a thermal particle and H is the typical scale of variation of macroscopic quantities like the density or the temperature. In the coronal holes this transition is very close to the surface of the Sun since λ /H ≈ 1 before 2-3 rsun. We present results from various kinetic and exospheric models of the solar wind. In all these models the shape of the electron velocity distribution function plays an important role for the dynamics. For instance, recent models have shown that, despite the relative smallness of λ /H in the low corona, the heat flux in this region cannot be described satisfactory by theories which suppose that the local particle velocity distribution functions are close to Maxwellian.

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