Our guest for this week's CLaSP Seminar Series will be Dr. Katariina Nykyri of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Title: On the Plasma Transport and Energization at the Magnetospheric Boundary Layers

Abstract:
While the solar wind cools as it flows through the heliosphere, it is rapidly heated when interacting with magnetized planets. The first part of this heating occurs at the planetary bow-shocks, followed by additional heating at the magnetospheric boundary layers, until reaching the highest temperatures inside the planetary magnetospheres. In-situ spacecraft observations have clearly demonstrated that the magnetosheath plasma has been strongly heated and significantly rarefied when it penetrates into the magnetosphere, indicating that the heating process is nonadiabatic. Meanwhile, the average temperature ratio between ions and electrons remains the same.. Exploring the detailed plasma acceleration, heating and transport mechanisms with in-situ satellite measurements in space-plasma provides a better understanding of the nature of plasma and may therefore be helpful in development of new energy source (e.g., fusion energy). In this talk we discuss results from multiple space missions (e.g., Cluster, THEMIS, MMS) and numerical simulations and discuss the physical mechanisms that provide plasma transport and energization at the magnetospheric boundary layers: the magnetosheath, the magnetopause, the low and high-latitude boundary layers and cusps. Understanding why magnetosphere is so hot is helpful in understanding plasma heating in solar corona and other astrophysical systems where we don’t have multi-point in-situ measurements of plasmas.