Magnetic Fields in the Solar System : Planets, Moons and Solar Wind Interactions

Description

This book addresses and reviews many of the still little understood questions related to the processes underlying planetary magnetic fields and their interaction with the solar wind. With focus on research carried out within the German Priority Program ”PlanetMag”, it also provides an overview of the most recent research in the field. Magnetic fields play an important role in making a planet habitable by protecting the environment from the solar wind. Without the geomagnetic field, for example, life on Earth as we know it would not be possible. And results from recent space missions to Mars and Venus strongly indicate that planetary magnetic fields play a vital role in preventing atmospheric erosion by the solar wind. However, very little is known about the underlying interaction between the solar wind and a planet’s magnetic field. The book takes a synergistic interdisciplinary approach that combines newly developed tools for data acquisition and analysis, computer simulations of planetary interiors and dynamos, models of solar wind interaction, measurement of ancient terrestrial rocks and meteorites, and laboratory investigations. Front Matter ....Pages i-xviii General Introduction and Scientific Summary of the German Priority Program “PlanetMag” (Hermann Lühr, Johannes Wicht, Stuart A. Gilder, Matthias Holschneider)....Pages 1-6 Modeling the Interior Dynamics of Gas Planets (Johannes Wicht, Martin French, Stephan Stellmach, Nadine Nettelmann, Thomas Gastine, Lucia Duarte et al.)....Pages 7-81 Global Geomagnetic Field Reconstructions from Centuries to Excursions (Monika Korte, Maxwell Brown, Ute Frank, Robin Senftleben, Norbert Nowaczyk)....Pages 83-110 Interannual Fluctuations of the Core Angular Momentum Inferred from Geomagnetic Field Models (Seiki Asari, Ingo Wardinski)....Pages 111-123 Laboratory Experiments and Numerical Simulations on Magnetic Instabilities (Frank Stefani, Marcus Gellert, Christoph Kasprzyk, Alejandro Paredes, Günther Rüdiger, Martin Seilmayer)....Pages 125-152 Modeling Magnetospheric Fields in the Jupiter System (Joachim Saur, Emmanuel Chané, Oliver Hartkorn)....Pages 153-182 Empirical Modeling of Planetary Magnetospheres in Response to Solar Wind Dynamics Using EOF Analysis and Multivariate Linear Regression (Maosheng He, Joachim Vogt)....Pages 183-200 Kinetic Simulations of Electron Acceleration at Mercury (Jörg Büchner, Patrick Kilian, Patricio A. Muñoz, Felix Spanier, Fabien Widmer, Xiaowei Zhou et al.)....Pages 201-240 Physical Processes in the Dusty Plasma of the Enceladus Plume (Victoria Yaroshenko, Patrick Meier, Hermann Lühr, Uwe Motschmann)....Pages 241-262 Modeling of the Ionospheric Current System and Calculating Its Contribution to the Earth’s Magnetic Field (Boris E. Prokhorov, Matthias Förster, Vincent Lesur, Alexander A. Namgaladze, Matthias Holschneider, Claudia Stolle)....Pages 263-292 Climatology of Air Upwelling and Vertical Plasma Flow in the Terrestrial Cusp Region: Seasonal and IMF-Dependent Processes (Guram N. Kervalishvili, Hermann Lühr)....Pages 293-329 Mars’ Crustal Magnetic Field (Achim Morschhauser, Foteini Vervelidou, Paul Thomas, Matthias Grott, Vincent Lesur, Stuart A. Gilder)....Pages 331-356 Magnetic Signatures of Terrestrial Meteorite Impact Craters: A Summary (Stuart A. Gilder, Jean Pohl, Michael Eitel)....Pages 357-382 Magnetic Properties of the Iron–Nickel System: Pressure, Composition, and Grain Size (Michael Wack, Michael Volk, Qingguo Wei)....Pages 383-406 Back Matter ....Pages 407-413