Workshop Convenors, ISSI Workshop 16-20 April 2012
André Balogh, Imperial College London, UK, Email:
Andrei Bykov, Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia, Email:
Peter Cargill, University of St Andrews and Imperial College London, UK
Richard Dendy, Euratom/UKAEA Fusion Association, Culham Science Centre, UK
Thierry Dudok de Wit, Lab. de Physique et Chimie de l'Environnement et de l'Espace, Orléans, France
John Raymond, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Topic
The ISSI Workshop on the "Microphysics of cosmic plasmas" will address the physical processes that underlie the observed large-scale properties, structures and dynamics of cosmic plasmas, the matter that fills interplanetary, interstellar and intergalactic space, as well as the solar atmosphere and the Earth's magnetosphere. The Workshop will review the status of understanding microscale processes in all astrophysical collisionless plasmas. The formation, properties and role of turbulence will be extensively reviewed. Magnetic reconnection, a ubiquitous process that unquestionably plays a major role in the dynamics and energetics of plasmas but remains elusive experimentally and challenging theoretically. Reconnection in different contexts, from magnetospheres to the sun and to astrophysical scales will be the subject of several talks at the Workshop. The formation, dynamics and effects of shock waves travelling in cosmic plasmas will also be extensively discussed, with an emphasis on the local properties of shock waves. The Workshop is expected to lead to an enlightening review of long-standing questions which have remained the fundamental building blocks of astrophysics and space physics on all scales. The list of participants includes experts in astrophysics, space plasma physics, as well as those working in laboratory plasmas. This will be the second in a series of three workshops on cosmic plasmas. The subject of the first Workshop, held on 16-20 May 2011 was "Particle acceleration in cosmic plasmas"; the third, planned for early in 2013, will have as its subject "Multi-scale structure formation and dynamics in cosmic plasmas".
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last update: 13 April 2012
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