Heliophysics. Vol. 1: Plasma Physics of the Local Cosmos

Description

Cambridge University Press, 2009, 435 pages, ISBN: 0521110610Heliophysics is a developing scientific discipline integrating studies of the Sun's variability, the surrounding heliosphere, and climatic environments. Over the past few centuries, our understanding of how the Sun drives space weather and climate on the Earth and other planets has advanced at an ever-increasing rate. This 2009 volume, the first in this series of three heliophysics texts, integrates such diverse topics for the first time as a coherent intellectual discipline. It emphasises the physical processes coupling the Sun and Earth, allowing insights into the interaction of the solar wind and radiation with the Earth's magnetic field, atmosphere and climate system. It provides a core resource for advanced undergraduates and graduates, and also constitutes a foundational reference for researchers in heliophysics, astrophysics, plasma physics, space physics, solar physics, aeronomy, space weather, planetary science and climate science.ContentsPreface Prologue Introduction to heliophysics Creation and destruction of magnetic field Magnetic field topology Magnetic reconnection Structures of the magnetic field Turbulence in space plasmas The solar atmosphere Stellar winds and magnetic fields Fundamentals of planetary magnetospheres Solar-wind–magnetosphere coupling: an MHD perspective On the ionosphere and chromosphere Comparative planetary environments