Drivers of dynamic solar wind

The goal of the project is to advance our understanding of dynamic solar wind formation processes.

We use in situ observations of the solar wind by the NASA Parker Solar Probe spacecraft launched 2018 and according to NASA being the first-ever mission to "touch" the Sun.

Solar wind acceleration occurs over a larger height interval and Parker Solar Probe allows for the first time sampling regions where significant solar wind acceleration is ongoing locally.

The solar wind formation is a very dynamic process and the project plans to quantify the relative role played in it by localized dynamic structures such as switchbacks, current sheets and flux ropes forming at close distances to the Sun.

The project particularly focuses on the regions around the critical Alfvén surface, an important region where the solar wind goes from being sub-Alfvénic at small distances from the Sun to being super-Alfvénic at larger distances.

Remote observations and numerical simulations suggest the high importance of this region for the solar wind formation and turbulence development in the solar wind.

The science questions to be answered are how the properties of switchbacks, currents sheets and flux ropes change across the region surrounding the critical Alfvén surface and what are the important physical processes in the regions surrounding the critical Alfvén surface?