Berlin 2005 – scientific programme

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EP: Extraterrestrische Physik

EP 3: Transport energetischer Teilchen

EP 3.4: Talk

Saturday, March 5, 2005, 10:30–10:45, TU BH349

Kinetic aspects of coronal heating — •Eckart Marsch — Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung

In order to understand coronal heating, the microphysics of the dissipation at small scales of various forms of mechanical, electric and magnetic energy (contained in waves, turbulence and nonuniform flows and currents) must be addressed. In fluid treatments this difficult problem is often circumvented by enhancing artificially the dissipation, e.g. through an increase of the collision rates for the tenuous corona, and by lowering thus the Reynolds number by many orders of magnitude. We critically discuss the basic assumptions underlying collisional transport theory and the related heating rates, and briefly describe collisionless alternatives. We elucidate some kinetic aspects of coronal heating in association with resonant excitation and damping of plasma waves, and discuss instabilities that are typically found in the solar wind and expected to occur in the corona.