Dynamics of Plasma-Dust Interactions in the F-Corona and Interplanetary Shock Waves

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This study will attempt to determine the essential properties of the coronal force field and its interaction with circumsolar dust, including ion drag and Coulomb drag from the solar wind plasma, sudden orbital changes during coronal mass ejections, interaction of the local magnetic field with the electric charge on the dust particles, and orbital changes due to evaporation and sputtering. These studies will attempt to determine whether these orbital changes give rise to the observed dust "rings" around the sun, and how the distribution of dust relates to solar activity. These relationships will allow observations of F-coronal dust, such as those to be carried aboard the Solar Heliospheric Observatory spacecraft, to be used as an indicator of the coronal plasma environment. Numerical simulations of the dynamical evolution of dust particles released from comets and asteroids will be carried out. These computations will form the basis for identifying the source distribution of coronal dust. Calculations of the force field in the F-corona, and the numerical techniques and analytical solutions developed and refined here, will provide powerful tools in a wide range of non-Keplerian dynamical problems, such as cometary dynamics and disintegration, planetary accretion, stability of asteroidal satellite orbits, and interrelations between the distribution of dust and solar activity. This work also relates to studies outside the solar system, including stars with dust envelopes, plasma-dust interactions in flare stars, and dust escaping stellar systems into the interstellar medium.