Exploring New Regions of Space: Fundamentals and Impacts of Astrophysical Plasma Turbulence

像太阳这样的恒星是如何将快速的超音速风吹进它们的本地环境的？为什么太阳大气层的温度要比太阳本身高几百倍？太空天气的破坏性影响能被可靠地预测吗？在我们尚未探索的部分太空中，我们可能会发现什么？未来十年将提供一个前所未有的机会来回答这些问题，以及等离子体天体物理学中其他悬而未决的主要问题。美国宇航局的帕克太阳探测器（PSP）将很快成为第一个飞越日冕的航天器，而旅行者号航天器现在开始首次探索日球层以外的本地星际介质（LISM）。在这些空间区域有许多未解之谜有待研究，但它们也是理解上述未解问题核心的普遍物理过程的关键。此外，空间天气——近地空间中不断变化的等离子体条件——由于其对地球上的我们可能造成的严重后果，越来越迫切地需要理解和预测。由于现代社会越来越依赖其技术基础设施，空间天气与传染病一样，在英国的国家风险登记册上名列前茅，可能对经济和公众健康造成重大危害，危及生命。我认为回答这些问题和挑战的关键在于等离子体湍流的重要性——等离子体湍流是构成宇宙中大多数已知物质的电离气体的基本复杂混沌行为。等离子体湍流在自然界中无处不在，控制着这些环境的能量流动和动力学，但关于它是如何工作的基本问题仍然存在，它在多大程度上是普遍的，以及它如何影响它所渗透的天体物理系统。直到最近，天体物理学中湍流的影响还没有得到充分的重视，但随着对它的理解的最新进展，它现在被认为在许多重要的场景中发挥着关键作用，例如，太阳和恒星风的产生、太阳日冕的加热、吸积盘的传输、星系团的加热、磁场的产生和空间天气的影响。我的研究愿景是将这些相关主题连接在一个新的和独特的跨学科项目中，研究等离子体湍流的基础和影响，这将回答这些重要而及时的问题。这项拟议的研究，是建立在我在空间等离子体湍流方面已经证明的专业知识的基础上的，包括使用PSP对日冕进行首次测量，以确定湍流如何产生太阳风并加热日冕，使用旅行者号来了解星际湍流及其对全球日球层的影响，在大型等离子体装置上进行新的实验室实验，以探测等离子体湍流核心的基本相互作用。以及了解湍流对空间天气影响的新技术，并紧急提高预报精度。这个雄心勃勃且独特的项目将采用跨学科的方法来实现最大的影响，使我能够成为该领域的新领导者。学术影响将通过回答基础等离子体物理和空间等离子体物理的重要长期问题来实现。通过改进空间天气预测，将实现社会经济影响，以帮助保护我们免受其破坏性影响，并防止对经济造成数十亿英镑的损失。总之，该提案描述了一个非常及时的跨学科研究项目，涵盖了等离子体物理学的重要基础主题，天体物理学中长期悬而未决的问题，具有重大发现潜力的空间探索，以及直接应用于具有重大社会影响的空间天气预报的明确路径。

How do stars like the Sun drive fast supersonic winds into their local environments? Why is the solar atmosphere hundreds of times hotter than the Sun itself? Can the damaging effects of space weather be reliably predicted? What might we discover in parts of space we have yet to explore? The coming decade presents an unprecedented opportunity answer these, and other, major outstanding questions in plasma astrophysics. NASA's Parker Solar Probe (PSP) will soon become the first spacecraft to fly through the solar corona, while the Voyager spacecraft are now beginning to explore the local interstellar medium (LISM) beyond the heliosphere for the first time. There are many mysteries to be investigated in these regions of space, but they also hold the key to understanding the universal physical processes at the heart of the above unanswered questions. In addition, space weather - the changing plasma conditions in the near-Earth space - is being realised as increasingly urgent to understand and predict due to its potentially severe consequences for us on Earth. Space weather is high on the UK's National Risk Register, alongside infectious diseases, with the potential for substantial harm to the economy and public health, putting lives at risk, due to the vulnerabilities of our modern society's increasing reliance on its technological infrastructure.I consider the essential key to answering these questions and challenges to be the importance of plasma turbulence - the fundamental complex chaotic behaviour of the ionised gasses that make up most of the known matter in the universe. Plasma turbulence is ubiquitous in nature, governing the flow of energy and dynamics of these environments, but basic questions remain about how it works, to what degree it is universal, and how it impacts the astrophysical systems that it pervades. Until recently, the effect of turbulence in astrophysics had been under-appreciated, but with recent progress in understanding it is now seen to play a key role in many important scenarios, e.g., solar and stellar wind generation, heating of the solar corona, accretion disk transport, galaxy cluster heating, magnetic field generation, and space weather impacts.My research vision is to connect these related themes in a new and unique interdisciplinary project on the fundamentals and impacts of plasma turbulence, which will answer these important and timely questions. The proposed research, which builds on my proven expertise in space plasma turbulence, involves using PSP to make the first measurements in the solar corona to determine how turbulence generates the solar wind and heats the corona, using Voyager to understand interstellar turbulence and its effect on the global heliosphere, novel lab experiments on the Large Plasma Device to probe the fundamental interactions at the heart of plasma turbulence, and new techniques to understand the effect of turbulence on space weather and make urgent improvements to forecast accuracy.An interdisciplinary approach will be taken to this ambitious and unique project to achieve maximum impact, allowing me to establish myself as a new leader in the field. Academic impact will be achieved by answering important long-standing questions of fundamental plasma physics and space plasma physics. Socioeconomic impact will be achieved from improved space weather predictions to help protect us from its damaging effects and preventing billions of pounds worth of damage to the economy.In summary, this proposal describes a highly timely programme of interdisciplinary research that covers important fundamental topics in plasma physics, long-standing open questions in astrophysics, space exploration with the potential for significant discoveries, and direct application to space weather forecasting with a clear path to major societal impact.