NSWP: Kinetic Turbulence-Driven Solar Wind Model Through the Resonant Cyclotron Interaction - Protons and Alpha Particles

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The PI and his team will construct a detailed physics-based model of the kinetic heating and acceleration of all coronal hole ion species caused by the resonant cyclotron interaction. They will first investigate a more realistic interaction for protons, considering a broad distribution of wave propagation directions, as implied by observations and as predicted by their prior work in compressible MHD turbulence. The team will incorporate this proton heating effect into the spatial evolution of plasma flowing outward through a coronal hole, and they will then determine detailed wave intensities and spectra required to generate the observed solar wind distributions. Since the spectra of alpha particles and the dispersion relation of the waves will evolve together and affect each other, the PI will use hybrid simulations to model this behavior in a self-consistent manner. The simulation will follow these microphysical dispersive interactions, which will then be incorporated into global coronal hole equations to describe the macrophysical evolution of the solar wind with increasing radial position. The PI's team will use the kinetic description resulting from this effort to explore the limits on the resonant wave spectra and spectral energy transport rates required to yield the observed fast solar wind, as well as the response of the flow properties to changing coronal hole conditions. The PI will also apply this approach to the collisionless slow solar wind. Such rigorous kinetic understanding of the microphysical processes taking place in the coronal plasma will allow the PI's team to correctly reproduce the thermal behavior of the disturbed solar wind in global simulations of CME propagation. This knowledge will also enable the PI to accurately model the acceleration of solar energetic particles at CME shocks and other space weather phenomena. This research effort will involve student participation at all levels, including graduate students and postdocs, at the University of New Hampshire's Space Science Center.