CAREER: Turbulent Dissipation and Plasma Heating in the Near-Earth Solar Wind

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In this project, the Principal Investigator (PI) will exploit his established research program in numerical plasma gyrokinetics, specifically tailored for the comprehensive study of solar wind turbulence. His existing numerical simulations require advanced High Performance Computing (HPC) resources and offer a unique capability to answer fundamental and compelling questions about the nature of kinetic turbulence in the solar wind, the physical mechanisms responsible for its dissipation, and the resulting plasma heating. This project will focus on several key physics questions, including identifying the processes occurring in the solar wind that lead to its observed turbulent energy spectra, determining which physical mechanisms are responsible for dissipating solar wind turbulence, how the energy of turbulent fluctuations heats solar wind plasma, and how energy is partitioned among among the protons, electrons, and minority ion species in the solar wind. The PI's education and training program includes a plan to develop a workforce with the experience and ability to effectively use HPC resources in space plasma physics, as well as in other fields of scientific research and technology development. The PI will establish the "Iowa High Performance Computing Summer School" to offer a hands-on, project-based course to 80 graduate students over 5 years, allowing them to integrate HPC approaches into their own research efforts. By providing this next generation of scientists with a solid foundation in parallel algorithm design and supercomputing skills, the PI's educational program will contribute to sustaining a technologically competitive workforce in the United States.