Origins of the Ambient Solar Wind: Implications for Space Weather

The Sun's outer atmosphere is heated to temperatures of millions of degrees, and solar plasma flows out into interplanetary space at supersonic speeds. This paper reviews our current understanding of these interrelated problems: coronal heating and the acceleration of the ambient solar wind. We also discuss where the community stands in its ability to forecast how variations in the solar wind (i.e., fast and slow wind streams) impact the Earth. Although the last few decades have seen significant progress in observations and modeling, we still do not have a complete understanding of the relevant physical processes, nor do we have a quantitatively precise census of which coronal structures contribute to specific types of solar wind. Fast streams are known to be connected to the central regions of large coronal holes. Slow streams, however, appear to come from a wide range of sources, including streamers, pseudostreamers, coronal loops, active regions, and coronal hole boundaries. Complicating our understanding even more is the fact that processes such as turbulence, stream-stream interactions, and Coulomb collisions can make it difficult to unambiguously map a parcel measured at 1 AU back down to its coronal source. We also review recent progress -- in theoretical modeling, observational data analysis, and forecasting techniques that sit at the interface between data and theory -- that gives us hope that the above problems are indeed solvable.Comment: Accepted for publication in Space Science Reviews. Special issue connected with a 2016 ISSI workshop on "The Scientific Foundations of Space Weather." 44 pages, 9 figure

Solar Wind Turbulence and the Role of Ion Instabilities

International audienc

STRAIN-RATE EFFECTS ON HIGH-TEMPERATURE FRACTURE-BEHAVIOR OF A 2124AL-SIC(W) COMPOSITE

The high-temperature fracture behavior of a 2124Al-SiC(w) composite compared with a 2124Al alloy was investigated in this study. Axisymmetric tensile tests were carried out over a temperature range from 25-degrees-C to 550-degrees-C and at strain rates from 5 x 10(-5) s-1 to 0.3 s-1. Detailed fractographical observations and cross-sectional microstructure analyses were also made to identify local micromechanical processes of cavity initiation at high temperature. One of the important results is that the cavity initiation sites of the composite are strongly influenced by the strain rate at high temperatures: cavities initiate at whisker ends at low strain rates and at whisker sides at high strain rates. Furthermore, the favored direction of cavity growth is also dependent upon the strain rate, being approximately 45 deg at low strain rates and perpendicular to the tensile axis at high strain rates. Such different local fracture processes at different strain rates are interpreted in terms of the role of the SiC whiskers on the load carrier in the composite at high temperatures.X1114sciescopu